Two days before New Year’s Eve, 76-year-old Ann-Lis Hake in Malmö receives a text saying that her daughter has changed her mobile phone and she is asked to delete the old number. She obeys the call, but becomes suspicious when she is then asked to fork over SEK 15,000 for a new phone and computer.
– I felt that this was wrong, so I texted that I just paid all the bills and that I don’t have SEK 15,000, says Ann-Lis Hake.
AI calls up
But her hesitation disappears completely when she suddenly gets a call and the voice is the same as her daughter’s. Now Ann-Lis is asked to bring over SEK 5,000.
– When I hear my daughter’s voice, all protective barriers fall and everything you’ve learned about not doing this or that. I think I can bring over SEK 5,000, which she urged me to do, says Ann-Lis Hake.
In retrospect, Ann-Lis is convinced that the fraudsters found her daughter’s voice either on social media or on her mobile answer and then cloned it with the help of AI.
AI scams will become more common
The police’s national fraud center is aware of several cases of vote cloning abroad, but reports have also been received in Sweden.
AI researcher Lars Holmberg at Malmö University believes that today it still takes a lot of time and voice data to clone voices using AI, but he warns that the phenomenon will become more common.
– Now we have such effective language models that there will be great opportunities to build all kinds of services around them, both commercial but also illegal and those that aim to deceive people, says Lars Holmberg.
Advice to others: “Have a password”
Fortunately, the transaction to the fraudsters was stopped by Ann-Li’s bank, SEB, which saw that something was not right. After the incident, she made a police report and contacted the newspaper Sydsvenskan, to warn others.
If she were to receive another strange call from her daughter today, she knows how to act.
– Right away we decided on a password, which only we know, says Ann-Lis Hake.