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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Soooo… holdup.
- Take out kidnapping insurance
- “Go to mexico”
- Get “kidnapped”
- Run the scam with your fancy schmancy ai
- Get pay out and get “rescued”
If you’re running the scam yourself, why would you even use an AI to mimic yourself?
Your scammers were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should!
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.
What an amazing grandma and what absolute pieces of shit to take advantage of such a nice person.
