‘You can’t tell anyone’: A particularly disturbing new phone scam carried out using AI

To stop their family member’s ordeal, a man on the phone asks the couple to transfer $500 to the Venmo app, a mobile payment service owned by PayPal. Steve, who is a police officer himself, comes up with the idea to ask the kidnapper to hear his mother’s voice again. He refuses. “If you ask me again I will kill her“,” he threatens. Fearing the man would do the worst, Steve paid the requested $500. Believing his victim to be obedient, the bandit demands another $250, and Steve complies. The kidnapper hangs up and there is no news for 25 minutes.

Here’s a new scam targeting motorists.

After this time, Steve calls his parents back to ask his mother how she is feeling. “I’m in bed, why?she asks, dumbfounded. In fact, there was no kidnapper near him.

A voice created from scratch

Using artificial intelligence, the bandits identically recreated the voices of the New York couple’s family members. Technological progress allows for more and more incredible and bluffing scams.

Wired, An American magazine specializing in the impact of new technologies gives advice on how to avoid scams. First, it is recommended to end the conversation and call our friend back yourself. Then request a video call. Obviously, it is not easy to react rationally in such a situation.