Fake is the New Black

I am overdue writing up the fact that rapid AI advances have now made scammers much more dangerous. People don't seem to realize that things we thought were off in the future last year are here already and becoming so sophisticated so quickly they are, and will be, catching people off-guard. Until we have much better safeguards in place everywhere, you need to be very much on guard. Update passwords and put in place 2 factor authentication everywhere. A video call of a loved one can and eventually will be faked.

If you don't know for sure that it's real, assume it's fake. This year you will have a very hard time knowing it's real.

Unless you are expecting a contact from some source, you should start with a default condition that it is a scam. Scammers can now easily fake the voice of a person sufficiently accurate and undetectable that they can get into banking systems that use voice recognition as a security measure.

An AI system can now tell if you have type 2 diabetes just by listening to about ten seconds of your voice. A scammer's business is to know how to dupe people into lowering their defenses. They can now be aided by AI for working out a particular strategy tailored specifically to fool you personally. That could include AI recognizing from your voice what strategy would work best on you. They can fake any person's real-time moving image as well as their voice.

The link below describes a scam that was successful in fooling someone that they were in a group meeting with their Chief Financial Officer and other employees. All except the employee being scammed were deep fakes and they were convincing enough that he released more than 25 million dollars to the scammers. 

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/02/deepfake-scammer-walks-off-with-25-million-in-first-of-its-kind-ai-heist/