Tom Hanks has warned fans that an ad for a dental plan that appears to use his image is in fact fake and was created using artificial intelligence.
In a message posted to his 9.5 million Instagram followers, the actor said his image was used without his permission. “BEWARE!! There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it,” Hanks wrote over a screenshot of a computer-generated image of himself from the clip.
The Oscar winner has expressed concerns in the past about the use of AI in film and TV, although he has not shied away from approving digitally altered versions of himself in film.
Between voice cloning, gpt-4, and social media, the technology exists TODAY for scammers to call you at 4am with the voice and intimate knowledge of a loved-one, and tell you that they need you to send them money for an emergency.
You thought old people were easy to scam before? We’re about to enter a golden age of manipulation.
My grandmother is a Greek immigrant and doesn’t speak English very well. Back in 2017 someone called her and told her myself and my mother were dead and she spent like 3 days freaking out and crying. I can only imagine what would happen if someone were to do that today while emulating a voice she knew…
… Or you just have a word/phrase known between yourself and the other person.
Yes, the technology exists. No, it’s not a threat for your grandma. Scammers would first need need to know which phone number is your grandmas, them they need to find out the relatives of your grandma, obtain enough sample data from your voice and train an AI model for at least a few hours to imitate your voice. That’s not a realistic scenario to do for a slim chance of getting a few thousand bucks. This kind of social engineering attack is only viable for very rich persons and businesses.
I’m sorry, but your assessment of how difficult that would be is WAAAAAY off.
Scammers are already doing stuff like this en masse with highly customized email scams.
The way this scam would work is to start with YouTubers, where grabbing the voice data is easy. Then you find their Facebook profile… Very easy, since people use the same usernames, or they go out of their way to link their profiles.
It’s a pretty easy step to make friend requests with those people. And then a very easy leap to find their relatives real names and towns through their Facebook connections.
Now you take their connections and towns and do reverse phone number lookups.
ALL of this can be automated. Every step.
The voice cloning and gpt-powered phone calls can be automated now, too.
The only reason this isn’t happening at scale is that scammers haven’t had enough time to adapt yet.
It’s weird you talk about how easy it is but your only example is with very public people where all you need is a Google search to get their info.
People are reaaally downvoting you, but how would someone call my G-Ma and imitate my voice using AI?! My voice isn’t on the internet. That’s an insane thing to fear for any regular person.
Do you have a recorded voicemail greeting? There are techniques now to train an AI voice on as little as 3 seconds of audio.
Probably a good idea to come up with a code word or something for verifying it’s you.
I read something recently that said a study was performed and Teens are most susceptible to getting scammed online.
They would fail. I have many ways to corroborate and they know I don’t answer the phone and to call 911. Nobody is calling me in a emergency ever. I don’t drive, I don’t give money to anyone etc… People need to have the policy of if you can make a call and it’s an emergency then call 911. Also always have roadside assistance.
