With the availability of apps allowing people to easily alter their face and voice, it certainly is entertaining to watch the creativity of people take shape. But not everyone uses their ingenuity to delight people and some, have malicious intent.
Recently, a person scammed a UK based energy company using a form of deepfake technology. The trickster was able to convince the CEO of a company to transfer $243,000 (1.75 crore INR) by pretending to be the CEO of the parent company. This is certainly a bizarre scenario where as simple as it sounds the scammer must have gone to great lengths to convince the victim.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the cyber crime was brought to light by the insurance agency, Euler Hermes Group SA when they reported it to the authorities. The agency insisted on keeping the name of companies involved confidential and the culprit is not yet caught. The account to which money was sent was from Hungary which was traced to Mexico and the further trail was more widely spread which made tracking difficult.
The CEO of the energy company energy said that he was convinced that the voice he heard on the phone was of the parent company’s CEO because of the apparent German accent and the ‘melody’ of the voice. The technology used by the scammer was able to perfectly mimic the voice, so convincingly that it made the victim have complete trust in the voice.
It is a mystery how the culprit was able to train the AI to mimic the particular voice but it should be noted that technology is becoming more and more accurate. The threat that deepfakes pose has been a hot topic lately as the technology has been getting more and more accurate with each iteration.
Mostly the technology has been used to make memes to entertain people but it is not hard for someone to deepfake a video of a political leader declaring war to cause chaos. Whatever might happen but deepfake is now here to stay, memes or chaos.