A mother in the US received a phone call and heard her daughter pleading for help saying she had been kidnapped. However, in retrospect, the voice turns out to be AI.
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Jennifer DeStefano from Arizona told the American broadcaster WKYT about a phone scam that shook her deeply.
Her 15-year-old daughter is on a skiing holiday when she suddenly receives a call from an unknown number. When Jennifer DeStefano picked up, she heard her child sobbing and crying on the other end. When asked what happened, it replies, “Mom, I messed it up”.
A man’s voice then announces that he has the daughter in his power. He is demanding $1 million for his release. DeStefano responds that she doesn’t have that much money. The criminal goes down to $50,000.
The mother is in her other daughter’s dance studio at the time of the call. Those present react quickly. Immediately, a friend calls the police, another contacts DeStefano’s husband.
4 minutes later, the mother has certainty: her 15-year-old daughter is fine, she is safe on a skiing holiday. DeStefano hangs up.
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In retrospect, it turned out that the scammer had imitated the daughter’s voice with the help of an AI. But it worked so well that the mother, by her own admission, never doubted for a second that she had her daughter on the other end of the line:
“It was completely her voice. It was her tone. It was the way she would have cried,” says the mother. “I didn’t doubt for a second that it was her. That’s the crazy part that really hit me to the core.”
Computer science professor Subbarao Kambhampati told WKYT that so-called “voice cloning” technology is improving at a rapid pace. Just 3 seconds of speech material would now be enough for the AI to be able to copy the voice very similarly.
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What do experts advise? According to the FBI, criminals often go to their target’s social networks to find the voting material. To avoid this, the profile can be switched to private mode so that it is no longer publicly visible. However, that doesn’t always work: According to DeStefano, her daughter didn’t have any public profiles.
If you get a call like this, keep calm. Calling an unknown or international number is a first warning sign of fraud. Also, asking specific details that a stranger can’t possibly know can help spot a scam. There have already been several such attempts at deception in the USA.
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