In a report titled ‘The Artificial Imposter’ by McAfee, an online security firm, around half of the Indians who took part in the survey were not able to distinguish between the real and the cloned voice.
The report said, “The survey reveals that more than half (69 percent) of Indians think they don’t know or cannot tell the difference between an AI voice and real voice”.
About 83 per cent have faced financial losses due to these new AI-based voice scams.
The survey was conducted in seven countries, and 7054 people participated in it. This survey was around artificial intelligence-enabled voice scams done by cybercriminals. From India, 1010 respondents took part in it.
However, the latest AI scam poses a greater risk, with researchers claiming that cloning someone’s voice is now a major tool in cyber criminals’ arsenal.
The report said, “About half (47 per cent) of Indian adults have experienced or know someone who has experienced some kind of AI voice scam, which is almost double the global average (25 per cent). 83 per cent of Indian victims said they had a loss of money- with 48 per cent losing over ₹50,000”.
More than 80 per cent of Indians transfer their voice data online, especially through recorded audio notes on social media, voice notes, and other channels at least once a week.
From these sources mentioned above, the audio data gets into the hands of cybercriminals who use it to clone a person’s voice. It just takes three seconds of audio to clone somebody’s voice.
The report said, “Particularly if they thought the request had come from their parent (46 per cent), partner or spouse (34 per cent), or child (12 per cent). Messages most likely to elicit a response were those claiming that the sender had been robbed (70 per cent), was involved in a car incident (69 per cent), lost their phone or wallet (65 per cent) or needed help while travelling abroad (62 per cent)”.
McAfee CTO Steve Grobman said, “Artificial Intelligence brings incredible opportunities, but with any technology, there is always the potential for it to be used maliciously in the wrong hands. This is what we’re seeing today with the access and ease of use of AI tools helping cybercriminals to scale their efforts in increasingly convincing ways”.
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