Artificial intelligence: criminals clone the voice of a teenager to make believe in his abduction

BET À DAY

An Arizona mother got the scare of her life when thugs cloned her daughter's voice to trick her into thinking she'd been abducted, all in an effort to scam her out of money. 

It all happened when Jennifer DeStefano received a call from a private number. 

When she answered, she heard the voice of her 15-year-old daughter, Brianna. 

“I picked up the phone and heard my daughter's voice, and it said, 'Mom », Sobbing. I said “what happened?” And she said, 'Mom, I screwed up' sobbing and crying,” the mother told Arizona's Family.

That's when a man took the line demanding a ransom. He told her that he had his daughter and that if she wanted to see her again, she had to obey his orders.

After several minutes of panic and a call to 911, Mrs. DeStefano finally received a call of the teenager who did not understand her mother's panic. 

The latter was safe and had never been abducted. Indeed, the criminals had rather cloned the girl's voice using artificial intelligence in order to swindle money from her mother.

“I never doubted a single second that it was her,” she said, adding that this is what terrifies her even more in this story.