Kidnapping scams are now using AI. One of the latest incidents cloned a teen girl's voice, which demanded a staggering $1 million for ransom for her mother.
In a phone call, scammers used the AI-generated voice of a 15-year-old girl to ask for money from a mom in Arizona. The hoax call pretended that her daughter had been kidnapped. And to free her from her terrifying captors, the mother had to pay a hefty ransom to the criminal minds who mimic her daughter's voice.
AI Kidnapping Scam Clones Girl's Voice
Artificial intelligence, shortly known as AI, has become quite popular. Various tools such as OpenAI ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Bing Chat, to name a few, started to take the world by storm due to their groundbreaking features. While these platforms are used to help people in their daily tasks, including but not limited to content creation, research, and more, criminals are now using them too.
According to People, an Arizona mom, Jennifer DeStefano, reports receiving a phone call from scammers pretending that her daughter had been kidnapped. She narrates that an unknown number tried calling her while her 15-year-old kid was on a ski vacation.
DeStefano says she only decided to answer the incoming call as she instinctively thought her daughter might be in trouble. So even if it was from an unknown mobile number, she went on to talk to the perpetrators.
Much to her surprise, when she picked up the call, she immediately heard her daughter's voice "crying and sobbing." The voice that sounded like her daughter says, "Mom, these bad men have me," according to DeStefano. She recalls that her 15-year-old child pleaded for help, saying, "Help me, help me."
Fake Kidnapper Asks for $1 Million Ransom
Besides her daughter, a man spoke during the phone call. The mom said the guy pretended they had her teen girl held captive. She adds that the fake abductor threatens her that they will drug her daughter if she attempts to call the police or anybody else, the New York Post reports.
The Arizona mother says the scammer told her, "I'm going to have my way with her. I'm going to drop her off in Mexico." After hearing these terrifying words, she got scared.
But despite that, the fellow mothers who were with DeStefano during the call reached out to 911, per Fox News's report. Several minutes after, they learned that her daughter was apparently safe, and she was not kidnapped in the first place.
The mother says that "it was completely her voice," adding that it accurately mimicked how she cried and "her inflection." The mom adds that she "never doubted for one second it was her" despite it being an AI-generated scam.
