60 Minutes reporter Amelia Adams uses AI technology to mimic her voice and ‘swindle’ her colleague
Amazing moment 60 Minutes reporter uses AI technology to perfectly replicate her own voice and ‘scam’ her colleague – and why it should scare any Australian
- Scammers using AI and impersonating trusted phone numbers
- The link allows the scammers to gain a victim’s trust
Scammers are starting to implement artificially intelligent technology to trick Australians into giving away their personal information and hard-earned money.
A new problem known as spoofing involves hard-core thieves masking their phone number to appear as a trusted contact, such as a bank, government agency, or loved one.
While it’s been around for a while, it’s gotten more nuanced with the evolution of AI technology that can imitate the exact voices of people you know.
To demonstrate how easy it is to fool someone, 60 Minutes reporter Amelia Adams called on cybersecurity firm CyberCx to scam one of the show’s crew members.
The company’s CEO, Jason Edelstein, used AI to perfectly mimic her voice during a phone call and ask her colleague Dan for her passport number.
To demonstrate how easy it is to fool someone, 60 Minutes reporter Amelia Adams called on cybersecurity firm CyberCx to swindle one of the show’s crew members
“We’re going to call Dan… and we’re going to ask him to release your passport number that you’ll need while you’re on the road,” Mr. Edelstein said.
“We have some fabricated voice samples that we’re going to produce using artificial intelligence that will sound very, very similar to your voice, which when combined with the call spoofing will make the scam really believable.”
Dan was immediately tricked into handing over her private information, thinking it was her.
One of many Australians recently scammed by spoofing scams, Melbourne businessman Tim Watkins revealed that he lost more than $220,000.
The scammers who scammed Mr. Watkins were able to impersonate his bank’s number, NAB, and tell him that his bank account had been used to purchase $800 worth of Amazon gift cards.
Mr Watkins had no reason to believe the text was suspicious and believed someone had actually used his account to purchase the gift cards.
A new concern is spoofing, which involves hard-core thieves masking their phone number to appear as a trusted contact, such as a bank, government agency, or loved one. While already a successful tactic, it has become more nuanced with the evolution of artificially intelligent technology (pictured) that can imitate the exact voices of people you know
Tim Watkins (pictured), was scammed for $220,000 in just 10 minutes after scammers used the same number as his bank, NAB, to gain his trust
By responding to the attached phone number and giving them a total of 10 codes sent through the same number, he unknowingly allowed ten transactions.
“On returning home, I logged into NAB online to find out that a significant six-figure sum had been debited, wiping out my business and personal bank accounts,” Watkins told Daily Mail Australia shortly after being scammed.
“(I was) surprised that they (NAB) didn’t seem to have a protocol for dealing with the cyber scam, nor for helping me through what was a very traumatic time.”
Chris Sheehan, NAB Executive for Group Investigations and Fraud, said: “Unfortunately, once money has left an account and been sent to another bank, it is extremely difficult for us to recover them. These criminals are becoming more sophisticated and operating with speed to move stolen money.”