People urged to have 'family safe word' following mother's horrifying AI scamming attack
Scammers are using AI voice cloning technology to target people
People are being urged to have a “family safe word” after a mother shared her horrifying experience of an AI scamming attack.
The woman was fooled into thinking her daughter had been kidnapped and the scammers achieved this by using an AI of her daughter’s voice.
An Instagram account, @thetraffickjamheroes, shared the tale in a reel, including an interview clip where the mother spoke to NBC about her ordeal.
In the video, the Instragrammer said: “You need to have a family safe word because of a new AI technology. My family's secret code word is spaghetti with meat sauce, for example.”
He went on to play the interview where the mother detailed how scammers used an AI voice cloning technology to make her believe that her daughter was in danger.
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In the video, she explained: “I pick up the phone and I hear my daughter's voice and it says, ‘mom’ and she's sobbing. I’m like ‘what happened?’ and she’s like ‘mom, I messed up’ and she's sobbing and crying.
“Then, I hear a man's voice say ‘put your head back, lie down’ and I'm like ‘wait, what's going on?’
“And this man gets on the phone and he's like ‘listen here, I've got your daughter. This is how it's going to go down. You call the police. You call anybody, I'm going to pop her stomach so full of drugs, I'm going to have my way with her and I'll drop her off in Mexico.”
The mother recalled how she started “shaking” as she listened to her daughter plead “help me mom” down the phone.
At first, the man demanded a million dollars from her before dropping it down to $50,000 in exchange for the safety of her daughter.
However, not all was as it seemed. The woman’s child wasn’t in any danger at all, in fact, she was upstairs in her bedroom.
The Instagrammer went on to add: “It only takes a few minutes of audio to generate a voice. Go make one [a family safe word] because you never know what's going to happen.”
In the caption, they urged: “This is so important. Spread awareness to save lives.”
People were shocked by the mother’s experience and took to the Instagram comment section to share their thoughts.
One user wrote: “Happened to me once a dude said they had my mom so what I did was I had him on speaker while I was texting my mom I told her are you okay where are you and she was fine so I went off on the dude.”
Another said: “Well my heart just dropped. This world is evil. Good grief.”
And a third joked: “I just generated your voice because now I know your safe word.”