2023-07-09 17:00:14
Jennifer DeStefano (left), victim of voice cloning by artificial intelligence, testified before the United States Senate, June 13, 2023, in Washington. The scammer used his daughter’s voice, while threatening to kill her, to demand a ransom from her mother. JACK GRUBER-USA TODAY/SIPA USA
Those who voted for George Santos, elected to the US Congress in November 2022 from the ranks of the Republicans, thought they had voted for a young, brilliantly educated financier, of Jewish origin, homosexual and owner of many homes. None of this was true. Of Brazilian origin and having trouble with the justice system in his country, he was separated from his wife, lived with his sister and finally confessed to being rather Catholic… He was charged in May, not so much for his lies, as he qualified “errors”, but for financial fraud, money laundering and embezzlement of public funds. Such forgers, liars, mythomaniacs or plagiarists, history abounds. They are not all unmasked, but their ability to harm and cause harm is often limited.
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On the other hand, thanks to the progress of digital technologies, and in particular artificial intelligence (AI), fraud and counterfeiting are taking on an unprecedented and much more worrying scale, in areas where their consequences can be serious. An unprecedented scale, because technologies make them available to everyone, at a lower cost, and without having to master computers or coding. With kit software solutions, purchased “off the shelf” on the dark web, criminals can quickly launch a large-scale scam and disappear in an instant covering their tracks.
These frauds are also more worrying because they are very difficult, even for some impossible, to detect. And criminals have quickly learned to master and exploit these sophisticated digital means, which help them to consolidate their lead over the forces of order, even if they are in cyberspace.
Fraud generally has two objectives: manipulation (propaganda, espionage, etc.) or theft. The recent “Doppelgänger” campaign is a good illustration of the first objective. Led by Russia, this propaganda and interference operation produced fake sites and links that usurped the visual identity of government sites and several European and French newspapers, including The world. These links led to articles that promoted Russia and denigrated Ukraine and the countries that support it, perfectly imitating the style and graphics of the counterfeit sites.
Greater credibility
Thanks to the generative AI of the ChatGPT type, the “troll farms”, these organizations which massively disseminate false information on social networks, are able to produce polite content, well presented and in very correct French. No more spelling mistakes and syntax errors that allowed the most attentive to detect fake sites. “In this area of geopolitical destabilization, the designs are broader than before. It is no longer a question of small campaigns, but of large-scale operations aimed at manipulating public opinion, such as the “Doppelgänger”, or at gathering strategic information, such as the cyber espionage campaign carried out once morest the European defense sector by the Lazarus hacker group on the LinkedIn professional network »notes Benoît Grunemwald, cybersecurity expert at ESET France.
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