Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated voice cloning has been on the rise and cyber criminals across India have been using it to extort money. Delhi, the national capital, alone registered 685 cybercrime cases in 2022 as against 345 in 2021 and 166 in 2020, as per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
Just last year in December, a senior citizen, Lakshmi Chand Chawla from Delhi's Yamuna Vihar, was tricked into sending Rs 50,000 to the scammers. He received a ransom demand via WhatsApp, which included a child's voice cloned using AI.
The police revealed that Mr Chawla received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number claiming that they had kidnapped his cousin's son. To convince the victim, the criminals played a voice recording of the child, pleading for help.
Panicked and misled by the realistic voice, Mr Chawl readily complied with the scammers' demands and transferred ₹ 50,000 via Paytm.
What is Voice Cloning?
With just three or four seconds of audio input, the voice cloning technology can recreate anyone's voice. Surprisingly, only a basic level of experience and expertise is required to produce a clone with an 85 per cent voice match to the original, as per the assessment of security software company McAfee.
The assessment report added that further efforts could increase the accuracy even more in future. Training the data models, McAfee researchers achieved a 95 per cent voice match based on just a small number of audio files.
Now, fraudsters use this voice cloning technology to deceive victims. They create a family emergency scam and convince them with replicas of family members in distress. Just as we saw in Mr Chawla's case.
How can we avoid being scammed by AI voice cloning?
– Always enable the caller ID feature on your smartphone. The caller ID feature will alert you of who is calling and their location. In addition, it even indicates if the call was from a telemarketer or a scam.
– Avoid sharing sensitive information, including your phone number and email ID.
– Implement call blocking. You must take advantage of the call-blocking feature on your smartphones.
