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UNITED STATESA mother’s worst nightmare, trapped by artificial intelligence
Using AI, individuals have ‘cloned’ a teenage girl’s voice from a sample. They used it to make her mother believe she had been kidnapped and to demand a ransom from her.
Brie was safe on a ski vacation while her mom fell victim to the prank.
Jennifer DeStefano was attending her youngest daughter’s dance class in Scottsdale, Ariz., when her phone started ringing last week. In an instant, she froze: “I picked up and heard the voice of my eldest daughter sobbing,” says the American to WKYT. Worried, the mother asked her 15-year-old daughter what was happening to her: “Mom, I screwed up,” Brie replied, in tears. Jennifer then heard a male voice asking her daughter to ‘put her head down’ and ‘lay down’.
Jennifer’s anguish came to a head when the man picked up the phone: “Listen, I have your daughter. Here’s how it’s going to be. If you call the police or anyone, I’m going to stuff her full of drugs. I’m going to do what I have to do with her and I’m going to dump her in Mexico”. During the intervention of the male voice, the American might hear her daughter screaming for help in the background.
The individual demanded a ransom of one million dollars from Jennifer, which he reduced to 50,000 dollars when the mother of the family assured him that he might not afford to pay. At the time of the call, Jennifer was surrounded by other mums, one of whom called the police. Another alerted their friend’s husband, who was able to immediately make sure Brie was safe. The teenager was well on her ski vacation, far from suspecting the nightmare her mother had just experienced.
“Think regarding movies. Ask lots of questions»
It turns out that malicious people used a sample of Brie’s voice to “clone” her using artificial intelligence and use it to make money. The teenager has no public account on social networks, but we hear her voice in several interviews carried out in the school and sports context. According to Subbarao Kambhampati, professor of computer science at Arizona State University, a three-second sample is enough, artificial intelligence does the rest.
This kind of hoax has become very common. According to Dan Mayo, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI office in Phoenix (Arizona), it happens every day and there is a lot of mistrust. “Think regarding movies. Slow down. Slow the person down. Ask lots of questions,” he advises. Jennifer, she has a hard time recovering from her emotions: “It was completely her voice. It was his way of speaking. That’s how she would have cried. I never doubted for a second that it was her. That’s the strangest thing. It really touched me deep inside.”
(joc)
