Be careful with what you post online as fraudsters are using AI technology to clone your voice and the scammers will use this to steal from your family.
Just like what happened to Jennifer DeStefano, a mother from Arizona who narrated a frightening experience after phone fraudsters employed artificial intelligence technology to make her think her teenage daughter was kidnapped.
DeStefano explained, “I pick up the phone and I hear my daughter’s voice, and it says, ‘Mom!’ and she’s sobbing. I said, ‘What happened?’ And she said, ‘Mom, I messed up,’ and she’s sobbing and crying.”
Fraudsters in Action
“This man gets on the phone and he’s like, ‘Listen here. I’ve got your daughter. This is how it’s going to go down. You call the police, you call anybody, I’m going to pop her so full of drugs. I’m going to have my way with her and I’m going to drop her off in Mexico.’ And at that moment, I just started shaking. In the background, she’s going, ‘Help me, Mom. Please help me. Help me,’ and bawling,” she continued.
After a few minutes, she was able to confirm with the help of some friends that her daughter was safe. Despite this, she was traumatized by the experience.
“It was completely her voice. It was her inflection. It was the way she would have cried. I never doubted for one second it was her. That’s the freaky part that really got me to my core,” she said.
Computer science professor Subbarao Kambhampati warned that these stories of voice-cloning technology and catfish schemes could become more common as AI technology improves.
“In the beginning, it would require a larger amount of samples. Now there are ways in which you can do this with just three seconds of your voice. Three seconds. And with the three seconds, it can come close to how exactly you sound,” Kambhampati said.
In an article published by Fox News Digital, Kurt Knutsson the CyberGuy offered advice to avoid voice cloning scams that includes never answering an unknown number, removing a personalized voicemail, and avoiding posting videos online.
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