Artificial intelligence is changing every industry. Fraudsters are also more and more willing to use it to make their scams more credible.
At the beginning of this year, their latest fraud, for which they used images, became loud on the Internet Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez. More and more often in Poland, fraudsters try to approach Internet users using artificial intelligence.
The image of politicians is regularly used for fraud and data extortion, including: Rafał Trzaskowski and Sławomir Mentzen. Fraudsters are also starting to use likenesses of famous people more often, and AI has given them opportunities, among others, to: copying celebrity voices. A small sample, even from interviews, is enough for artificial intelligence to – to a better or worse extent – reproduce the voices of stars.
This time the scammers took advantage Grzegorz Skawiński (check!), “borrowing” using his voice in order to extort money from Internet users.
There are recordings circulating on the Internet in which someone impersonates the guitarist Station wagon, also sets up his fake social media accounts and sends requests to send him money. To make things more credible, fake accounts use Skawiński’s AI-generated voice in the recordings.
Skawiński felt obliged to warn fans against extortion attempts. He published stories on Instagram in which he warned his followers.
“Hello, I have an important announcement. Recently, a lot of fake accounts have appeared on the Internet, impersonating me, sending text and voice messages with my voice prepared by artificial intelligence. I would like to ask you not to like suspicious profiles, not to contact them, and, God forbid, do not send money or provide bank account details. Don’t be gullible, be vigilant” – he said.
Skawiński also spoke about the fraud for Radio Gdańsk.
“Very often, these are so-called bots, i.e. they are not live, real accounts, but accounts generated in a completely artificial way. You have to be very naive, because these correspondences are often like from a translator; they’re not even in Polish. The same is true with “fakes” voice: an attentive ear will hear that it is a synthesizer speaking, with my timbre, but it is not a normal voice, normal speech. I, Grzesiek Skawiński, say: I am not asking anyone for money, do not send me anything under any circumstances.” – he said.
Skawiński added that he did not rule out that the case would be reported to the police.