After being scammed into thinking her daughter was kidnapped, an Arizona woman testified in the US Senate about the dangers side of artificial intelligence technology when in the hands of criminals.

  • animist@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    This is gonna become waaaaay more common. I am already working on code words with my family members just in case.

    • loklan@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      This is an excellent idea, I am going to discuss that with the family. My dad gets phished constantly, he’s pretty savvy but he also has early dementia, so between that and AI, it’s going to get harder in the future.

  • carnha@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    I’ve only been thinking about the implications of faking a celebrity’s voice - personalizing it like this makes me sick to my stomach. Had no idea it’s already that easy. I don’t think the voice would even have to be that realistic - if they’re faking a life threatening situation, my first thought isn’t going to be “Hey, their voice sounded a little off”. Absolutely horrifying.

  • DarkThoughts@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Is no one questioning how the alleged kidnappers managed to create a voice profile from a random 15 year old girl to create such a convincing AI voice? The only source that claims that this was potentially an AI scam, was in fact just another parent:

    But another parent with her informed her police were aware of AI scams like these.

    Isn’t it more likely that dad & daughter did this and it backfired?

    • Stumblinbear@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s pretty easy to create voice clones, now. As long as you tailor the speech you want it to speak and don’t have it speak too long it can get pretty good even with very little input

    • davidhun@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Given the prevalence of social media platforms where you post videos of yourself, it seems pretty easy to get enough voice sampling to generate a convincing clone. Depending on how much personal info she and her family members put out on social media, it’s trivial to connect all the dots to concoct a plausible scenario to scam someone.

      Now whether or not it was “just a prank, bro” from family or whomever, I don’t know.

      • PlantJam@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        All it takes is a three second sample, according to “The AI Dilemma” on YouTube. It’s about an hour long, but it has a lot of really good information.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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        1 year ago

        Correct, it does not take much anymore to train up a voice model, especially a hysterical sounding one that would trick a mother. Teens post enough on social media that this could be done

  • WorseDoughnut@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    When DeStefano tried to file a police report after the ordeal, she was dismissed and told this was a “prank call”.

    Why am I not surprised.

  • Gray@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    My grandma fell for a scammer that was pretending to be one of her grandchildren stuck in a jail in Mexico over a mixup. No AI voice or anything, just an actor and a vulnerable 90+ year old woman. She sent the scammer $10,000. I cannot fucking begin to imagine what AI is going to do to the scamming industry.

    • IllegallyBlonde@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      A similar thing happened to me and my husband. We were out of state on vacation, and got a call and visit from the police at 3 am saying that my husband had been kidnapped for ransom. Of course he was laying right next to me, but for half a second I was terrified. It was a complete scam. They think they found my husband’s information in a data hack at his school.

  • pokexpert30@lemmy.pussthecat.org
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    1 year ago

    Teach your grandparents about those scams. Insists on the “nowadays a computer can replicate a voice perfectly enough over the phone, it will really sounds like real” as well as the “the numéro that will call will look like it’s from me. Just hang up and call me of you receive such a call”

  • Plume (She/Her)@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    I hate everything about AI and this is not helping. It feels like we opened a door wide open that we should’ve never have touched.

  • TruthButtCharioteer@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Soooo… holdup.

    1. Take out kidnapping insurance
    2. “Go to mexico”
    3. Get “kidnapped”
    4. Run the scam with your fancy schmancy ai
    5. Get pay out and get “rescued”