'This is my daughter's voice': AI convinces metro Phoenix moms of fake abductions
The next big question on the horizon is this: Has the human race created a machine that will replace us?
We are pondering that question because more than 1,000 tech leaders and researchers signed an open letter on March 29 declaring that AI or artificial intelligence poses such a threat to society that we need a pause in its development to build safeguards.
Whenever anyone shouts “apocalypse,” healthy skepticism is in order. We have much to learn about AI. Besides, if computers are really taking over, what does that look like?
This week two Arizona families told their own stories of what it could look like, of what happened when computers impersonated their loved ones.
AI sounded just like her daughter
Two mothers, one from Phoenix, one from Scottsdale, gave interviews telling of their harrowing introduction to voice cloning, in which they were fooled by rogue phone calls into believing their daughters had been abducted.
Digital recreations of their daughters’ voices sounded so real that the mothers were certain their daughters were in danger.
But they weren’t. It was all fake.
Their daughter’s voices were artificially produced by a computer program and then used by scammers to try to fool them.
“It was the most real, scary thing I’ve ever experienced in my life,” Phoenix resident DeLynne Bock said, in an interview with Fox News.
Phoenix Police said it was likely a scam
“My husband actually took the phone call. I was outside. He came out with this man on speaker phone using all kinds of foul language, screaming and yelling, saying that my daughter had hit him in a vehicle-accident situation. She can’t find her insurance. She this. She that. And it was like he wouldn’t let my husband get any words in. He’s just screaming and yelling and cursing. And ‘She can’t find her insurance card. She probably doesn’t have insurance. You better get here now. I’m going to take care of her.’ ”
Bock said she could hear what she thought was her adult daughter’s voice on the call. She called Phoenix Police and they told her it was likely a scam.
“I said there’s no way this is a scam situation. This is my daughter’s voice. This wasn’t just some person pretending. As a mother you know your daughter’s voice and this was my daughter.”
Later, she and the police were finally able to reach her daughter, who was at work and perfectly safe.
Another mother gets a harrowing call
A Scottsdale mom, Jennifer DeStefano, got a similar scare when she picked up a call and heard what sounded like her teenage daughter sobbing.
In an interview with 3TV/CBS5, she recalled, “I said ‘What happened?’ And she said, ‘Mom, I messed up,’ and she’s sobbing and crying.”
Expert warn: AI could forever change our lives within months
“Then I hear a man’s voice say, ‘Put your head back. Lie down,’ and I’m like, ‘Wait, what is going on?’ ” DeStefano told the news station.
“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 so full of drugs. I’m going to have my way with her.”
3 seconds of your voice is all it takes
All the time, her daughter was out of town skiing – where mom had originally thought she was. She was never in any danger.
But the voice on the call sounded so authentic, DeStefano said.
“It was never a question of who is this? It was completely her voice. It was her inflection. It was the way she would have cried. I never doubted for one second it was her. That’s the freaky part that really got me to my core.”
ASU computer science professor Subbarao Kambhampati, who specializes in AI, told 3TV/CBS5 reporter Susan Campbell that new digital tools require only about three seconds of someone’s voice recorded off of social media or elsewhere to recreate it.
Is this the dawn of machines taking over?
Will machines replace human beings?
We’ve actually been pondering the question for a long time.
A paramount moment came on Jan. 3, 1983, when TIME Magazine shoved aside its annual Man of the Year and replaced him with the Machine of the Year – the personal computer.
In 2017, Silicon Valley’s tech titans debated whether artificial intelligence should keep us up at night.
And in 2018 Elon Musk freaked out Joe Rogan with a long, pregnant pause and these ominous words, “I tried to convince people to slow down AI. To regulate AI. This was futile.”
The discussion got rolling anew in December, when AI startup OpenAI released its artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT with its eery, human-like answers.
We'll need to sharpen our discernment skills
Then on March 29, more than 1,000 tech leaders and researchers, including Musk, signed an open letter calling for a pause in AI development. They warned:
“Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”
National Review’s Noah Rothman argues these are scare tactics “greasing the skids” for “a variety of fund-raising solicitations” and for “bigger government in Washington, more substantial taxpayer-funded outlays for ‘research,’ and more industrial protectionism.”
His skepticism is welcome amid all the doomsday hype, but the digital world keeps rolling on with its ability to recreate and simulate our physical environment.
This week brought the release of a trailer for the video game Unrecorded. It imagines you are a police officer, with the gamer seeing through the perspective of a body camera.
The computer-generated images dazzle because they are almost indistinguishable from reality – they look like our physical world.
As we’ve also seen with two-Phoenix area moms confronted by highly persuasive computer-generated facsimiles of their kids, it’s becoming more obvious that all of us will need to sharpen our skills of discernment.
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: AI convinces metro Phoenix moms their daughters were abducted
