While looking for other information here, I came across what I wrote back in February 2018 in this topic. It was how the “your grandchild needs to be bailed out of jail” scam was getting a boost by software that can take a recording of a person’s voice and turn it into text-to-speech processing. Run the scam late at night when a grandparent may still be trying to wake up after the answering the phone and it has a better chance of succeeding.
While theorizing about all the problems this could occur, I said “Now comes the fact that we shortly may not be able to trust that an audio recording is actually from a person. We’ve already got that with video and pictures.”
At the time, I meant that graphics and video programs allow you to edit and manipulate existing media. In the five years since then, we’ve added deepfakes and more widespread AI-generated material. Give it a few reference points and AI will create new content from existing content.
It’s had benefits, such as allowing actors to play younger versions of themselves (with varying degrees of success). The new content also includes scams that do a good job of targeting specific audiences.
It’s gonna be interesting watching this develop.