Artificial Intelligence is used to clone voices in fraud calls: so you can identify them

Since last July 2023, a disturbing trend began to be seen in Mexico and some other nations Latin America. Where criminals began to use Artificial Intelligence systems to clone the voices of relatives and carry out extortion or scams from it.

As reported by colleagues from Publimetro Mexico, this new type of calls comes to constitute a kind of evolution of the previous fraudulent calls. Where the attacker pretends to be a relative or known person.

In the most extreme cases, some close family ties are alluded to and an attempt is made to convince the victim that said person has been kidnapped, resorting to the intervention of a third person who pretends to be the daughter, son, mother or person close to them.

Before it was extremely easy not to fall into the trap. Either because the person was right there or simply because the other person’s voice just didn’t fit.

But now with the emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence systems, things have become severely complicated, since these platforms can now perfectly imitate the voice of any person.

Essential tips to identify a fraud call that clones someone’s voice using Artificial Intelligence

At the moment the technology is not advanced enough to replicate the exact voice in absolute real time. This means that there will be a delay between each dialogue, unless the responses are pre-recorded and therefore cannot deviate from the extortion call’s preset script.

Therefore, the highest recommendation is to pay attention to the presence of delays or lags. At the same time, it is recommended to alter the natural order of the conversation to break the route planned for the call. In parallel, these are other basic tips:

• If the voice sounds robotic and there is a clear echo effect then it is most likely AI manipulated.
• If the tone and rhythm of the call is strange, attention should be paid to whether the responses sound mechanical or there are no natural variations in the articulation of words for the assumed context.
• Obviously if we receive a call from a strange number or that is shown as “Unknown”, from there we must be alert.

Financial information should never be given and the healthiest way out will always be to hang up and contact our relative without despair, since sometimes it can take an hour or two to confirm that everything is fine and it was a hoax.