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The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

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Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#51
post #27

The problem described in the article is unsolvable, given that a mid-range desktop from a few years ago can easily clone a voice that's convincing enough and there are no guardrails to those. Some silly KYC laws might limit a highschool kid making deepfakes of his crush, but once a model exists it's trivial to spread it around, and for organized groups to get ahold of those. Similar will happen with images, it's just…

Yet all of this can be easily defeated with soft language. The basic check "what's the password/verification word" will defeat this every time. This is basically opsec that we taught my grandparents, who were in their 90s. Its doable.

So they trick the kid out of the password first by calling them and pretending to be the parent.

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#52

This blog is kind of an interesting hybrid: > Every article published on SmarterArticles is authored and editorially controlled by Tim Green. Artificial intelligence tools are used within a structured and supervised workflow as research and drafting instruments. All arguments, framing decisions, source selections, and final publication choices remain human-directed and under my full responsibility. There are referenc…

I suspect this is much more common than you're imagining. I think it'd be silly for publishers of any kind, really, to not use AI tools for things like fact checking and so on.

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#53

What’s terrible is each time I am forced to call the bank, the more they try to tell me voice ID is secure and want me to provide my voice to authenticate. Never. Did ya’ll never play Uplink? With voice cloning as good as it is now, there’s no way a voice ID is secure enough for authentication.

My voice is my passport.

(never heard of anyone actually using that in real life, sounds uttery insane)

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#54

So, you answer your phone to the scam and… now they have your voice too. Talking on the phone is now an unmitigated liability.

The only solution? Answer the phone in an over the top comedy accent, such as Simpsons characters, or just whatever comes to mind.

A terse, altered "Hello" is all I say. Sometimes I don't say anything. Most humans would wait a few seconds then prompt with "...Hello?", whereas bots tend to hang up after ~2s silence

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#55

The problem described in the article is unsolvable, given that a mid-range desktop from a few years ago can easily clone a voice that's convincing enough and there are no guardrails to those. Some silly KYC laws might limit a highschool kid making deepfakes of his crush, but once a model exists it's trivial to spread it around, and for organized groups to get ahold of those. Similar will happen with images, it's just…

> The problem described in the article is unsolvable Well, not completely unsolvable. But nobody would like the solution. What all these scams rely on is a way to transfer money in an irrevocable fashion. Restrict that in meaningful ways and you end a lot of the abilities for these scams to operate. You could, for example, outlaw gift cards as a start. You could force the likes of Western Union to have a holding peri…

Also cash? Scammers will (and do) send a mule to your house to pick up boxes of cash.

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#56

What are legitimate uses for copying someone's voice without permission? I see none. Those scientists are just helping criminals to fully automate scamming and governments to create fake videos.

Well of course as you pointed out the legitimate one would be copying voices WITH permission (yours, someone you know who gives authorization, through contracts for movies/bots etc). The model can’t differentiate between voices for which you have permission or not.

But more generally while recordings might be copyrighted, the voice itself isn’t so copying a voice isn’t a crime, at least as it currently stands. You cannot however use said voice for deceptive practices. You can however for advertisement (needs permission). And in the US you can for satire, at least in the US, withOUT permission (falls under the 1st amendment).

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#57
post #22

Sounds like AI is just greasing the wheels of a long established 'grandparent scam'... goes something like this: 1) voice one: young adult calls, sobbing 2) grandparent inquires with a name... "Ben, is that you?" 3) voice one: "Yes grandma, it's me, Ben... I'm in trouble, please don't tell mom 4) voice two: "Hello, I'm attorney..." My grandmother fell victim to this almost 20 years ago, which only stopped when Wester…

lucky strike is the key here they can do this with VOIP really easily to massive amounts of numbers. its staggering amounts if you look at the traffic really. worst is if they proxy that via residential proxy services which often come from end-user / individuals phones so the traffic is hard to detect for carriers etc. since it looks like a regular VOIP app connection.

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#58
post #41
post #22

Sounds like AI is just greasing the wheels of a long established 'grandparent scam'... goes something like this: 1) voice one: young adult calls, sobbing 2) grandparent inquires with a name... "Ben, is that you?" 3) voice one: "Yes grandma, it's me, Ben... I'm in trouble, please don't tell mom 4) voice two: "Hello, I'm attorney..." My grandmother fell victim to this almost 20 years ago, which only stopped when Wester…

I remember my JROTC instructor also running into that and how she said afterwards they have a secret phrase between them two as a way of verifying it's truly them.

It's very, very hard for untrained people to be strict about verifying any secret phrase. The attacker can make all kinds of excuses, while creating urgency, and many people quickly abandon verifying the phrase. A scene in One Battle After Another comes to mind.

Re: The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence

#60

This blog is kind of an interesting hybrid: > Every article published on SmarterArticles is authored and editorially controlled by Tim Green. Artificial intelligence tools are used within a structured and supervised workflow as research and drafting instruments. All arguments, framing decisions, source selections, and final publication choices remain human-directed and under my full responsibility. There are referenc…

Interesting, something about the phrasing and pacing felt like AI to me, but not a model I’m familiar with - I guess that’s why. Usually I close articles once I realize they’re AI written, but this one was mild enough that I finished the whole thing.
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