AI abused for online fraud
Not only pensioners, but also corporate officials are often tricked into paying large sums
The phenomenon of CEOs or CFOs of major international businesses being deceived by individuals employing artificial intelligence to mimic the voice of the group’s leader, successfully duping even seasoned company executives, has been observed for several years.
The usual demand made by the voice concerns the transfer of money for the supply of goods or an overseas merger agreement, followed by the “boss” asking the business executive to keep the transaction confidential and to execute it immediately.
The ruse, known as a “deepfake,” is nothing more than another form of deception in order to embezzle significant amounts of money.
Based on the latest developments, in addition to voices, AI programs are also able to reproduce videos imitating with absolute fidelity the CEO of the company speaking on screen.
As AI enters more and more homes too, the phenomenon is growing to alarming proportions, confirming that victims of scams aimed at skimming bank accounts or cards are no longer pensioners or the elderly, who are not familiar with technology, but also people of all ages and from every professional category.
The voice and of course the video is reproduced by an algorithm, using posts usually on social media, the processing of which is now a relatively simple matter for the experts of the genre, who are often part of larger rackets with tentacles in many different countries.
Among the countless scams recorded daily, there has been a case reported where an algorithm reproduced the voice of an overseas student asking his parents for money urgently to deal with an emergency. The voice on the other end of the phone line leaves no doubt to the parent, who, knowing his or her child’s voice intimately, hurries to respond to the emergency and get him out of the difficult situation by depositing money into the account that the scammers indicate. In that case, too, the voice was reproduced through an algorithm from social media like TikTok, which is consistently used by young people – and not only them – to upload videos.
