Three seconds of audio is all it takes to create a voice clone that is virtually indistinguishable from the real voice, a technological advancement that is as worrying as it is thrilling because it can be put to malicious use to defraud people, said experts.
Voice clones or deepfakes have emerged as the latest tool for cyber scammers, they said, as artificial intelligence (AI)-related scams are being increasingly reported from different parts of the country.
Voice deepfaking started as an entertainment gig to mimic songs for Instagram reels on websites such as Covers.ai, Voicify.ai and VoiceFlip.ai but has spiralled into a larger problem with genuine AI startups such as ElevenLabs, Speechify, Respeecher, Narakeet, Murf.ai, Lovo.ai and Play.ht being weaponised in the hands of scammers.
More than a dozen websites have proliferated on the internet, offering free voice cloning options with accuracy as high as 95% in 29 languages and more than 50 accents. There are also professional voice cloning models which can mirror every intonation, rhythm and nuance.
“Deepfakes in general are quite dangerous, and particularly voice AI shall soon evolve into an organised phishing tool. For instance, job scams will now convert from a WhatsApp message to an actual HR voice calling you,” said Jaspreet Bindra, founder of Tech Whisperer.
“But, technological solutions, increased awareness and, of course, regulation shall also develop to keep a check on the proliferation of such scams.”
A voice clone is a synthetic audio created using generative AI tools which are trained on sample audio of a person. To create a clone, a source audio is needed which can be anything from an Instagram story to a YouTube video or even a short conversation on the phone. On Tuesday, a Lucknow resident registered a police complaint after having been allegedly duped of Rs 90,000 because of a phone call from a scammer who sounded exactly like one of the victim’s relatives. Several other such incidents of AI voice scams have been reported from Telangana and Karnataka this year. Voice cloning can be abused for committing multi-million dollar organised scams in banks, government bodies and almost any large organisation, cautioned experts.
“The surge in free-to-use voice cloning tools poses substantial risks in consumer and industry domains, such as identity theft and financial fraud,” said Vaibhav Tare, chief information security officer, Fulcrum Digital.
“In the financial sector, voice cloning compromises secure access, potentially leading to unauthorised account entry and eroding trust in voice-based authentication. In the insurance sector, voice cloning intensifies challenges by enabling fraudulent claims through fake audio recordings.”
According to a recent survey by cybersecurity firm McAfee, 47% 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%). Nearly 83% of the Indian victims said they had lost money, with 48% of them losing more than Rs 50,000. The firm surveyed 7,054 people from seven countries, including 1,010 from India. McAfee has predicted that in 2024, deepfakes will pose greater risks of identity theft, phishing scams as well as cyber bullying among children. AI service providers are aware of these downsides and therefore platforms like ElevenLabs are offering voice biometric or voice classifier tools to identify whether an audio was cloned using AI. However, cyber experts believe such tools aren’t enough to prevent voice AI scams because it is hard for an average victim to doubt the scammer amid a distress call.
“Preventing falling victim to a social engineering campaign that utilises voice cloning technology requires a combination of awareness, scepticism and security best practices,” said Kumar Ritesh, founder of cybersecurity firm Cyfirma. “For organisations, we recommend policies to be reviewed and to include guidelines for AI, ML (machine learning) and automation. Provide cybersecurity awareness training to employees that are closely aligned with relevant and new and emerging threats.”
For consumers, Ritesh said, “education and awareness campaigns to shed light on how scammers can leverage tools to clone images, video and voice are absolutely essential”.
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