Imagine this scenario: it’s the end of the day, you’re frazzled, you’re slightly worried about someone close who’s gone traveling and not been in touch yet, then your phone rings and you hear their panicked voice on the end of the line asking for money to help them. Would your first thought be to check whether it’s a scam? Or would it be to help them? 

What are AI voice cloning calls? 

It takes just three seconds of a recorded voice, for scammers to take and give to AI to make it say whatever they like. Terrifying! With most scams relying on creating a sense of panic and getting potential victims to act before they have time to think, it’s likely that most of the time it’ll involve making the voice sound distressed, asking for money – which when seemingly coming from a family member or close friend, would be hard to ignore! 

Do they really happen?

Starling Bank wrote a recent email to customers, claiming that AI voice cloning call scams are increasing, with 28% of Brits thinking they’ve been targeted over the last year. So even if you pride yourself on never falling for scams, it really is something that’s happening, and as tech gets more and more advanced, it’ll only get harder and harder to spot.

How to identify an AI voice cloning call

Even in the early days of this kind of scam, it could be tricky. Take a look at this unbelievable video of Cold Feet actor, James Nesbitt, having a phone call with ‘himself’ (or so it sounds like).

One way to stop scams in their tracks, is to have an agreed upon safe phrase shared with your close circle of family,  friends and colleagues, to help identify if a phone call is actually them. During any call you can ask them to verify their safe phrase, and you’ll know whether or not you’re actually speaking to them, or to a clone. 

They also might sound like themselves, but using phrases they may not normally say. However, this kind of nuance might be easy to spot if you’re in a calm state of mind, but if you’re in a panic thinking the caller is in trouble, these kind of subtleties would be harder to spot – which is what these criminals are relying on! 

Safe phrases should be something completely random and easy to remember, without using verifiable information like pet names, children’s names or favourite football teams (psst, this kind of stuff is really easy to find because of everyone’s digital footprints). This is important with usual passwords, but even more important here! Flowerpot Information Time or something similar would be good, no cyber criminal is likely to guess that off the top of their heads or find it online somewhere, and if it’s ever used you’d need to change it. 

Businesses and AI voice cloning calls

Thinking about the idea of creating panic, in a business setting it could be used to clone a boss’ voice asking for money to be transferred urgently, or an angry client who is very unhappy about service they’ve received demanding money be paid back to them or similar scenarios. 

If you’re a business where large sums of money is involved, such as a solicitor or an accountant, it really wouldn’t be overkill to create a pass phrase for any staff who have access to money. And likewise for the accounts team of other businesses. 

This isn’t about spreading fear, the tech is here for this kind of scam to happen, and we’d rather help small businesses get ahead of the game, than help them pick up the pieces after being targeted. If you’d like to talk through other ways we can look at protecting your business from sophisticated scams, please get in touch with us – we’re always happy to help where we can. You can also call the team on 01732 617788 or drop an email to [email protected]

If you liked this, you may also like: The End of 3G Could Mean Chaos This Year