An old scam just got more dangerous as artificial intelligence offers scammers new ways to fool their victims.
What scam is it? The grandchild trick is a well-known scam that most people have heard of before – a scammer calls elderly people and pretends to be one of their grandchildren over the phone. A dangerous situation or an emergency is imagined on the part of the scammer, for example that the grandson is in prison and he or she needs money from the grandparents.
But the grandson trick gets even more dangerous as scammers are now using artificial intelligence to mimic a grandson’s voice and sound like them.
This is what makes the scam so dangerous: By using artificial intelligence, fraudsters are able to analyze and imitate audio recordings of a voice. The AI recognizes the subtleties in a person’s speaking habits and mimics them.
The scammer then enters a text, which the AI plays back in the voice that was previously analyzed. Targets of the scam can no longer tell from their voice that the speaker is not their relative.
Scammers use AI to impersonate grandchildren and children
Examples of fraud using AI: The Washington Post reports an incident involving couple Ruth, 73, and Greg Card, 75. The Canadian seniors say a man on the phone who sounded exactly like their grandson Brandon claimed he was in jail and needed bail money.
A similar thing happened to a man named Benjamin Perkin, according to the Washington Post, whose parents were cheated out of over $15,000.
His parents are said to have received a call from an alleged lawyer who said their son was in prison and needed money for legal fees. The lawyer then passed the phone to said son, Benjamin Perkin, and he confirmed that he needed the money.
Benjamin Perkin’s parents were convinced they were talking to their son because the voice sounded like his. But he was neither on the phone nor in a prison.
According to the Washington Post, it is unclear where the perpetrator or perpetrators got the recording of Perkins’ voice, but he probably talks about his hobby, snowboarding, in videos on YouTube. Other social networks such as TikTok, Instagram or the Twitch streaming platform also offer the possibility of scammers recording your voice.
Twitch streamer Asmongold has already noticed how authentic such an AI-based imitation of a voice is. The streamer watched a clip of an AI impersonating his voice during a live broadcast and was surprised at how much the recording sounded like him.
AI Copies Twitch Streamer Asmongold So Perfectly That The Original Startles: “Oh My God, That’s So Good”