Banks in the U.S. and Europe tout voice ID as a secure way to log into your account. I proved it’s possible to trick such systems with free or cheap AI-generated voices.
The bank thought it was talking to me; the AI-generated voice certainly sounded the same.
On Wednesday, I phoned my bank’s automated service line. To start, the bank asked me to say in my own words why I was calling. Rather than speak out loud, I clicked a file on my nearby laptop to play a sound clip: “check my balance,” my voice said. But this wasn’t actually my voice. It was a synthetic clone I had made using readily available artificial intelligence technology.
“Okay,” the bank replied. It then asked me to enter or say my date of birth as the first piece of authentication. After typing that in, the bank said “please say, ‘my voice is my password.’”
Again, I played a sound file from my computer. “My voice is my password,” the voice said. The bank’s security system spent a few seconds authenticating the voice.
“Thank you,” the bank said. I was in. Read More
Daily Archives: March 2, 2023
Inside the ChatGPT race in China
A Chinese ChatGPT alternative won’t pop up overnight—even though many companies may want you to think so.
Every once in a while, there’s one thing that gets everybody obsessed. In the Chinese tech world last week, it was ChatGPT.
Maybe it was because of the holiday season, or maybe it was because ChatGPT is not currently available in China, but it took more than two months for the natural-language-processing chatbot to finally blow up in the country. (OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, told Reuters it wasn’t operating in China because “conditions in certain countries make it difficult or impossible for us to do so in a way that is consistent with our mission.”)
But in the span of the past week, a massive competition has developed, with almost every major Chinese tech company announcing plans to introduce their own ChatGPT-like products (even some that have never been known for artificial intelligence capabilities), while the Chinese public has been frantically trying out the service. Read More
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