In the Star Wars movies, the “force” provided power that could used for good or as exemplified by Darth Vader, the “dark side” and so it is with artificial intelligence.  Artificial intelligence can be use to combat scams through recognizing patterns present in scams as well as through machine learning algorithms even use historical data to recognize signs of new scams.  However, AI has also proven already to be a tremendous weapon for scammers using the dark side of the force to, among other things, create more effective phishing emails.  Using AI to create deepfake audios and videos to enhance their scams is now a serious problem

The Salt Lake City Utah Police Department reported that scammers were sending out emails to people with a deepfake video that appeared to show Police Chief Mike Brown telling the person receiving the email that they “owed the federal government nearly $100,000” and extorted the targeted victim to make a payment to the scammer.  Video and audio of the police chief was readily available for the scammers to create the deepfake. A similar deepfake voice cloning audio was done by scammers posing as Tulsa, Oklahoma police officer Eric Spradlin

TIPS

As always, you can never be sure whenever you get an email as to who is actually contacting you so anytime you are asked for personal information, click on a link or make a payment, you should independently confirm that the email is legitimate before responding.

In this case, the email address of the sender was readily able to be recognized as not that of the Salt Lake City Police Department and no police department is going to send anyone such an email with a video.  Further, local police departments would not be collecting money on behalf of the federal government nor would a demand be made for “around” $100,000.  Also, while deepfakes can be very difficult to recognize as phony, this particular deepfake video contained unnatural speech patterns.

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