"Voice cloning technology has various uses, including entertainment, accessibility, and interaction, but it also poses risks such as scams, highlighting the need for awareness of its ethical and legal implications."

Voice cloning technology raises concerns about fraud, copyright infringement, personal information security, and scams, highlighting the need for responsible use and guidelines to mitigate its potential misuse.

"Voice cloning technology is being used for AI-powered scams, which can be used to dupe users, cause mental stress, and extort money."

"Realistic voice cloning is made possible by artificial intelligence and deep learning techniques, which can simulate anyone's voice by analyzing and learning their unique patterns"

"Voice cloning technology poses risks of scams, misinformation, and hacking, which can be exploited by cyber criminals to harm users."

"Artificial intelligence (AI) is the technology used to create synthetic voices, including fake and cloned voices, which has raised concerns about its potential malevolent uses."

Individuals can protect themselves from voice cloning scams by being cautious and diligent, such as fact-checking and verifying the authenticity of calls and messages, and following best practices for online security and privacy.

"Artificial intelligence (AI) is the technology used for voice mimicry, enabling the creation of highly realistic voice clones that can be used for various purposes, including entertainment and scams, raising concerns about its legal and ethical implications."

"Voice cloning tools can simulate anyone's voice, with potential applications in entertainment, accessibility, and education, but also raise concerns about scams and legal implications."

AI models for voice cloning can be trained on existing videos, podcasts, and other digital data, allowing scammers to create realistic deepfakes.

A short audio clip is enough for AI to clone someone's voice, with the AI able to match 95% of the target's voice.

"Voice cloning technology has various uses, including entertainment, accessibility, and interaction, but it also poses risks such as scams, highlighting the need for awareness of its ethical and legal implications."

Title:

Content: The scary side of artificial intelligence

The pros of AI outweigh the Cons or threats in our day-to-day lives, and there’s no magic pill to protect us from the scary threats of AI.

  • Exclusive

It's a free Content, simply login/signup to unlock

Get in-depth Industry Insights and Analysis through our “Exclusive” content, presented to you by our esteemed panel of writers, for free

By continuing, you agree to the Terms & Conditions and acknowledge our Privacy Policy. This same account can be used across all Economic Times B2B portals.

  • Updated On Oct 3, 2023 at 03:02 PM IST

Artificial intelligence (AI), as we all know, is the simulation of human intelligence leveraging computer systems and machines. AI programs can continuously learn and evolve with experience. In technical terms, AI systems render the output by churning and analyzing the data for correlations and patterns and help make future predictions using these patterns.

Advt
Today AI is being used extensively in all facets of our lives starting from lifestyle, e-commerce, home appliances, automobiles, navigation, transport, healthcare, agriculture, education, financial planning, chatbots, marketing, cyber security, virtual assistant, industrial automation and many more.

Clearly, we have and are leveraging the strengths of AI to the fullest to automate the routine tasks and make it auto-learn over a period. There’s no doubt that AI has revolutionized the lives of all – organizations, consumers etc. But as they say, “Everything comes at a price”. This analogy is quite true for AI as well, there have been a lot of threats that have emerged using AI and are being utilized by the Cyber criminals to dupe the ignorant users, cause mental stress and extort money.

continued below

Executive Workshop

I’m not going to delve into all of threats but would like to elucidate some of the real ones that have come to the surface recently:

Voice cloning or mimicry

As the name suggests, it uses machine learning algorithms to simulate anyone’s voice. It requires certain voice data to analyze and learn the specific patterns of any individual. There are certain advantages of cloning a voice that can be used in voice assistants, chatbots, navigation systems and other areas. Voice cloning has existed for a while but was restricted to experts who possess the technical knowledge to be able to use the same. But now AI Voice cloning tools are available on the open Internet that anyone can leverage with literally no technical knowledge or cost to clone anyone’s voice. All you need to do is just Google and it will pop up and get a bunch of both free and paid AI Voice cloning tools.

Advt
In fact, recently one of the global leaders in online protection published a report stating how AI is fueling a rise in online voice scams, with just three seconds of audio required to clone a person’s voice. This is extremely creepy. Just imagine, if a Cyber-criminal clones your voice and tricks your near ones by making them believe that they are talking to you, and request for money due to any distress reasons. In fact, these are not assumptions but real-life incidents that are happening across the world every minute.

Deepfakes AI

Deepfakes AI are being used to impersonate an individual by manipulating videos, images, audios, and other content available on the social media platforms using deep learning techniques. It mainly transforms existing content from one person to another. This is another area that has been exploited by the Cyber criminals in the recent past, and there are a few deepfake cases that have made waves on the Internet. One of the most famous ones being Deepfake created by a VFX artist of one of Hollywood’s most famous male actors. This piece was so well made by rendering thousands of pictures using artificial versions of the actor. There are similar Deepfakes incidents involving other global celebrities and leaders. The damage and misuse of the deepfakes videos could be extremely dangerous for the human society and can be used by terrorists to incite riots and create nuisance.

Creating virtual people

This is another area where AI is being used to create people that do not exist. There are a lot of websites that allow you to generate a random image by just specifying the age group, gender & ethnicity, and you can continue to refresh these images at the click of a button. Be mindful of the fact that these images pertain to people that do not exist in this world. On the similar lines, there’s an emerging trend of AI news anchors that possess a human-like appearance and are fed data that they can read using text-to-speech technology. Recently, there's been a surge of AI-Driven robotic new anchors in multiple language channels. While the main objective of this initiative is to provide royalty free or cost-effective human images for branding and other purposes. However, the overuse of these technologies causes Fear of missing out (FOMO), Feeling of inadequacy, dissatisfaction, and isolation may potentially lead to psychological and emotional vulnerabilities.

One of the Hollywood movies, ‘HER’ portrayed an introverted and lonely writer (Joaquin Phoenix) who purchases an AI virtual assistant personified through a female voice to assist him in his writing job. However, when he finds out about its ability to learn and adapt, he falls in love with it. The film delves into emotional vulnerability and the impact of AI on human relationships.

Needless to say, that the pros of AI outweigh the Cons or threats in our day-to-day lives, and there’s no magic pill to protect us from the scary threats of AI. However, there are certain preventive tips that one can follow to mitigate any such risks. Do spread awareness with your family and friends:

  • Set some code words with family, and friends to verify the identity during emergency circumstances
  • Optimize social media presence by limiting your connections with only known contacts and avoid connecting with any unknown ones
  • Avoid saying ‘Yes’ as a greeting while receiving unknown calls as it can be used to authorize credit card charges or other purposes
  • Continuously update privacy settings on social media to allow viewing by friends and family only
  • Avoid clicking on any suspicious links or calls received without proper due diligence
  • Do not share your passwords and other sensitive information with anyone
  • Verify the credentials of any online information before circulating it through various mediums
  • Avoid public Wi-Fi connections offered at coffee shops or airports, which requires to enter password
  • Closely monitor the time spent by younger generation on social media and online gaming
  • Finally, in case of any suspicion, double check and report it to the host site or concerned authorities
The author is the CIO of MOVIN

Disclaimer: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETCIO does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETCIO shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organization directly or indirectly.

  • Published On Oct 3, 2023 at 03:02 PM IST

Most Read in Artificial Intelligence

Join the community of 2M+ industry professionals

Subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights & analysis.

Download ETCIO App

  • Get Realtime updates
  • Save your favourite articles

Voice cloning technology raises concerns about fraud, copyright infringement, personal information security, and scams, highlighting the need for responsible use and guidelines to mitigate its potential misuse.

What do cybersecurity experts believe about the use of synthesized voice?

could become a popular method of attacking banks and financial services

"Voice cloning technology is being used for AI-powered scams, which can be used to dupe users, cause mental stress, and extort money."

"Realistic voice cloning is made possible by artificial intelligence and deep learning techniques, which can simulate anyone's voice by analyzing and learning their unique patterns"

"Voice cloning technology poses risks of scams, misinformation, and hacking, which can be exploited by cyber criminals to harm users."

What are some risks regarding AI voice clning?

What do cybersecurity experts believe about the use of synthesized voice?

could become a popular method of attacking banks and financial services

"Artificial intelligence (AI) is the technology used to create synthetic voices, including fake and cloned voices, which has raised concerns about its potential malevolent uses."

Title:

Content: Moving at rapid speed, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has just announced its unanimous adoption of a new Declaratory Ruling finding that voice calls using artificial intelligence (AI)-generated voices fall under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

The ruling takes effect immediately and gives state attorneys general powerful new tools to go after voice cloning scams. Under FCC rules, telemarketers that use robocalls subject to the TCPA are required to obtain prior express written consent from the consumer unless an exemption applies. The TCPA has always prohibited the use of both prerecorded and artificial voices but advances in AI-generated voices have prompted the FCC to specifically address their use.

In recent years, scammers and other parties have begun using AI to create fake and even "cloned" artificial voices, including those of celebrities, politicians, and even a call recipient's family member. In this election season, there has been increasing concern about the use of voice clones to engage in voter suppression schemes.

Concerned about the potential malevolent uses of these AI-generated voice calls, the FCC issued a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) in November on the topic of "Implications of Artificial Intelligence Technologies on Protecting Consumers from Unwanted Robocalls and Robotexts." In the NOI, the FCC asked questions regarding the use of "AI-influenced" technologies in robocalling. A coalition of 26 state attorneys general, as well as a telecommunication carrier trade group, strongly urged the FCC to take action to give the attorneys general clear authority to act against AI-generated robocall violators.

The FCC now has made clear that the use of voice cloning in telephone calls and texts falls within the FCC's statutory authority under the TCPA. A major intent of the ruling is to communicate that the TCPA "does not allow for any carve-out of technologies that purport to provide the equivalent of a live agent, thus preventing unscrupulous businesses from attempting to exploit any perceived ambiguity in our TCPA rules."

As FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel explained, "with this Declaratory Ruling, we will have another tool to go after voice cloning scams and get this junk off the line."

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

What are some risks regarding AI voice clning?

What do cybersecurity experts believe about the use of synthesized voice?

could become a popular method of attacking banks and financial services

Individuals can protect themselves from voice cloning scams by being cautious and diligent, such as fact-checking and verifying the authenticity of calls and messages, and following best practices for online security and privacy.

"Artificial intelligence (AI) is the technology used for voice mimicry, enabling the creation of highly realistic voice clones that can be used for various purposes, including entertainment and scams, raising concerns about its legal and ethical implications."

Title:

Content: Tech
Artificial Intelligence

AI voice clones are turbocharging scams, top FTC official warns

"We need to be vigilant early," FTC Chair Lina Khan said.
By Tim Marcin  on
FTC Chair Lina Khan warned AI is turbocharging scams. Credit: Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images

AI tools, particularly voice clones, are supercharging scams, FTC Chair Lina Khan warned.

Speaking at an AI and venture capital event on Thursday, Khan warned officials will have to be proactive to stop AI-powered fraud, Bloomberg reported.(opens in a new tab)

She noted that they are already seeing AI "turbocharge" scams, using voice clones that can copy family members in distress as an example, according to Bloomberg.

"We need to be vigilant early," Khan said, according to Bloomberg. "If anything you need to be especially vigilant on the front-end because it’s much more difficult to solve these problems after."

Voice clones have proven capable of fooling folks. A CNN report (opens in a new tab)noted that fake kidnapping calls demanding ransoms using the tech were becoming more common. Jennifer DeStefano told the outlet her story of getting a call demanding $1 million for their daughter before realizing the caller had used AI to copy her voice.

"The voice sounded just like Brie’s, the inflection, everything," she told CNN.

AI voice clones have even made popular songs featuring fake versions of real artists. Even a relatively easy-to-spot fake image of the Pentagon being attacked caused a real dip in the stock market.

"As this stuff becomes more embedded in how daily decisions are being made, I think they invite and merit a lot of scrutiny," Khan said, according to Bloomberg. "Those problems and concerns are quite urgent and I think enforcers, be it at the state level or the national level, are going to be acting."

Tim Marcin

Tim Marcin is a culture reporter at Mashable, where he writes about food, fitness, weird stuff on the internet, and, well, just about anything else. You can find him posting endlessly about Buffalo wings on Twitter at @timmarcin(opens in a new tab).

Recommended For You
Snapchat's My AI has users reaching their snapping point

Fake Pentagon explosion photo caused a real dip in the stock market

Snapchat's AI chatbot is rolling out to all users globally

6 ways the White House is reining in AI

Trending on Mashable
Wordle today: Here's the answer and hints for June 4

NASA's finally talking about UFOs with Americans. Here's what they said.

Spider-Punk is the real hero of 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse'

Wordle today: Here's the answer and hints for June 3
The biggest stories of the day delivered to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use(opens in a new tab) and Privacy Policy(opens in a new tab). You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
Thanks for signing up. See you at your inbox!

What are some risks regarding AI voice clning?

"Voice cloning tools can simulate anyone's voice, with potential applications in entertainment, accessibility, and education, but also raise concerns about scams and legal implications."

AI models for voice cloning can be trained on existing videos, podcasts, and other digital data, allowing scammers to create realistic deepfakes.

Title:

Content: Technology

AI-enabled scams will proliferate

Ultra-realistic digital trickery will help fraudsters deceive people on an entirely new scale

Jeff Clune is an associate professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia and Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute.

(This illustration was created by Maclean’s art director Anna Minzhulina using the generative AI image program Imagine. Minzhulina spent weeks feeding prompts into the program, inspired by the essay.)

Money-grabbing scams have been happening for longer than we can remember: con artistry, Ponzi schemes, online phishing, even snail mail gambits. But the advent of more sophisticated artificial intelligence will soon make these tricks far more common, complex and convincing. Knowing who or what to trust online is about to get much more challenging—and we had better be prepared.

Photographs and videos used to be one way of verifying if things are true. Now, AI programs have opened the door to forms of scamming that are much harder to detect. Criminals can simply use software like Midjourney or DALL-E 2 to generate any kind of realistic photos. AI can also mimic someone’s voice, and soon AI-generated videos will be able to clone their appearances and facial expressions too. There are already deepfakes of Elon Musk telling people to invest their money in crypto, Tucker Carlson promoting new trading platforms and Ron DeSantis appearing in an episode of The Office as Michael Scott. We are losing our core methods of verification in ways most of us could not even have imagined just three years ago.

We have to prepare to face elaborate scams that take advantage of our trust. Picture this: in the near future, you might receive a video call from a family member who is asking for money because they are in a tight spot. It probably would not seem possible that you are talking to a deepfake, but this type of trickery—though still rare—is already spreading. Scammers can easily find existing videos or podcasts of somebody online and train an AI on that voice and facial expressions to create an uncanny resemblance. Because it is already possible to imitate my voice on a voice call, I have created a secret password for my family so we can verify each others’ identity if we ever get suspicious of each other over the phone.

The quantity of AI scams will also increase. Back in the ’80s, people would occasionally receive spam letters in snail mail, but those attempts were few and far between because con artists did not want to pay for paper and postage. Email removed the cost of sending mail, and the number of attempted scams skyrocketed. Just like email did a few decades ago, AI is making scamming far easier and cheaper. This could enable disruptive levels of manipulation in the near future. Rather than spending hours trying to defraud one person or paying 1,000 scam employees to work 40-hour weeks, a single scammer could train an AI model to deceive 100 million people simultaneously.

AI-generated, human-sounding robo-calls will contact millions of people at once. Instead of listening to a recorded message, the person will carry on a back-and-forth conversation without realizing the person on the other end of the line is not human. AI scammers will impersonate police officers or civil servants and ask for donations to certain charities, for example. Such scams will also be politically motivated—like an AI calling every Canadian to feed them false information about a political figure, or dictators flooding information channels with fake videos, comments, likes and emojis that subtly, yet relentlessly, repeat the party line. Criminals will wield AI to disrupt finance markets by pumping up worthless penny stocks or driving down the value of other stocks with fake news.

For now, scammers still need to be tech-savvy to create powerful AI-driven schemes. But in technology, what is hard now will be easy soon. As we develop better and more user-friendly AI software, a 12-year-old kid might be able to orchestrate a worldwide phishing attempt from his or her bedroom. Once it becomes cheap, quick and easy to program something that is convincingly human, we are in trouble. It will become incredibly difficult to know which information is trustworthy. Unless we invent technological and sociological solutions to these problems, I am afraid that we will soon not be able to trust most of what we see online, and that makes me deeply concerned about the future of our information landscape.

As we prepare for AI scams to proliferate, the best advice I can offer is for people to seek out and hold onto the sources they trust most—whether that is the New York Times or a particular reporter. But even then they must make sure they are in fact getting information from that source. We can also protect ourselves from scams by better understanding what technology can and cannot do. From now on, we should always second-guess what we see in text, websites and photos. Deepfakes are still rare, and most videos are trustworthy, but that will likely change. If a video seems surprising, do an independent search to see if people are reporting that it is fake. And if you have been scammed, tell others how it happened, so that they do not also fall prey.

Scams work best when they pull on heartstrings—and humans tend to relate and respond to other humans, especially those they know and trust. The better AI can impersonate a flesh-and-blood person, the more turmoil we can expect. As the cost of deception slides towards zero, we will need to build our individual and societal immune systems to handle an army of new threats. As in the real world, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The best vaccination for scams is knowledge and a sizable dose of skepticism.

We reached out to Canada’s top AI thinkers in fields like ethics, health and computer science and asked them to predict where AI will take us in the coming years, for better or worse. The results may sound like science fiction—but they’re coming at you sooner than you think. To stay ahead of it all, read the other essays that make up our AI cover story, which was published in the November 2023 issue of Maclean’s.

Looking for more?

Get the Best of Maclean's sent straight to your inbox. Sign up for news, commentary and analysis.
FILED UNDER:

What is necessary for voice cloning to work?

A short audio clip is enough for AI to clone someone's voice, with the AI able to match 95% of the target's voice.

Title:

Content: Advertisement
Foreign Press
Urgent warning.
This is how artificial intelligence is used to steal your money.
Translated from "Lebanon 24"
|
28-06-2023 | 11: 55
A-
A +
photos 0
A +
A-
There are many forms of fraud, but it usually works the same way: the fraudster pretends to be someone you trust to convince you to send money.
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) website, fraudsters pretend to be an IRS official or a family member among other examples.
Advertisement
According to Insider, “Most scams usually happen over the phone, but they can also happen via social media, text messages or email.
A good example of this is what happened with Google software engineer Richard Mendelstein.
The latter received a call, which he believed was from his daughter Stella, screaming on the phone for help from her father, asking him to withdraw $4,000 in cash as a ransom payment.
It was only after he transferred the money that he realized that he had been scammed and that his daughter was safe at school the whole time and had not been kidnapped.
"Vocal techniques are often used to mysteriously align with a child's age and gender, but using artificial intelligence, the sound on the other end of the phone can now look eerily similar to the sound of a real person."
“Although the AI technology that makes these scams possible is not new, it is becoming better, cheaper and easier to access.
Steve Grubman, chief technology officer at global security software company McAfee, said: “One of the most important things to note this year is that advances in artificial intelligence have made these technologies accessible to many people.
“Artificial intelligence for fraud is easier to use today by cybercriminals than it used to be. ”
Previous phone-call scams relied on the fraudster ’ s acting skills or the victim ’ s level of naivety, but now AI does most of the work.
Through AI platforms such as Murf, Resemble, and ElevenLabs, users can turn text into speech in the voice of the person they want.
“He just has to upload an audio file of the person who wants to use his or her voice to one of these sites (with a small audio clip, the AI can match 95% of the target ’ s voice) and then just write the text he or she wants to use in the scam. ”
"It is difficult to arrest those who commit such fraud.
The victim often has little information to give to the police.
To make matters worse are the logistical and judicial challenges faced by legal agencies, especially as fraudsters are present all over the world.
According to Grubman, if you feel like you ’ re being scammed, you don ’ t have to worry.
All it takes is asking a few questions that only the person whose voice is being used knows the answer to.
The FTC also recommended that if a loved one tells you they need the money, put the call on hold and try calling your family members separately to verify the story.
Security experts also recommend agreeing on a safe word and using it to distinguish between a real emergency and a scam.
“With the spread of artificial intelligence, these kinds of scams are putting the reliability of even our close family members at stake. ”
Advertisement
Our news via your email
SIGN UP
Translated from "Lebanon 24"

What has the US Federal Trade Commission warned about the use of voice cloning tools?

Difficult to distinguish from human voice

What is necessary for voice cloning to work?