A scammer in China used artificial intelligence (AI) to pose as a businessman’s trusted friend and convince him to hand over millions of yuan, authorities have said.
The victim, surnamed Guo, received a video call last month from a person who looked and sounded like a close friend. However, the caller was actually a con artist “using smart AI technology to change their face” and voice, said an article published on Monday by a media portal associated with the government in Fuzhou City.
The scammer was “masquerading as [Guo’s] good friend and perpetrating fraud,” the article said.
File photo: AFP
Guo was persuaded to transfer 4.3 million yuan (US$610,000) after the fraudster claimed another friend needed the money to come from a company bank account to pay the guarantee on a public tender.
The con artist asked for Guo’s personal bank account number and then claimed an equivalent sum had been wired to that account, sending him a screenshot of a fraudulent payment record. Without checking that he had received the money, Guo sent two payments from his company account totaling the amount requested.
“At the time, I verified the face and voice of the person video-calling me, so I let down my guard,” the article quoted Guo as saying.
He only realized his mistake after messaging the friend whose identity had been stolen, who had no knowledge of the transaction.
Guo alerted police, who notified a bank in another city not to proceed with the transfers, and he managed to recover 3.4 million yuan, the article said.
Efforts to claw back the remaining funds were ongoing, the article said, but it did not identify the perpetrators of the scheme.
The potential pitfalls of groundbreaking AI technology have received heightened attention since US-based OpenAI in November last year launched ChatGPT, a chatbot that mimics human speech.
China has announced ambitious plans to become a global AI leader by 2030, and a slew of tech firms, including Alibaba, JD.com, NetEase and TikTok parent ByteDance, have rushed to develop similar products.
ChatGPT is unavailable in China, but the US software is acquiring a base of Chinese users who use virtual private networks to gain access to it for writing essays and cramming for exams. However, it is also being used for more nefarious purposes.
This month, police in Gansu Province said that “coercive measures” had been taken against a man who used ChatGPT to create a fake news article about a deadly bus crash that was spread widely on social media.
A law regulating deepfakes, which came into effect in January, bans the use of the technology to produce, publish or transmit false news.
In addition, a draft law proposed last month by Beijing’s Internet regulator would require all new AI products to undergo a “security assessment” before being released to the public.
Pins hidden in her shoes, head forced down a toilet, kicked in the stomach: South Korean hairdresser Pyo Ye-rim suffered a litany of abuse from school bullies, but now she is speaking out. The 26-year-old is part of a phenomenon sweeping South Korea known as “Hakpok #MeToo,” where people who were bullied publicly name and shame the perpetrators of school violence — “hakpok” in Korean — decades after the alleged crimes. Made famous globally by Netflix’s gory revenge series The Glory, the movement has ensnared everyone from K-pop stars to baseball players and accusations — often anonymous — can be career-ending, with
One of Australia’s two active volcanoes on an island near Antarctica — known as Big Ben — has been spotted by satellite spewing lava. The lava flow on the uninhabited Heard Island, about 4,100km southwest of Perth and 1,500km north of Antarctica, is part of an ongoing eruption that was first noted more than a decade ago. The image was caught by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite on Thursday, and is a composite of an optical picture and an infrared image. The lava is seen flowing down the side of Big Ben from near the summit, known as Mawson Peak.
TIME TO TALK: Among China’s grievances were economic and trade issues related to Taiwan, but both countries emphasized the need to maintain communication US Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪) on Friday raised complaints about China’s state-led economic policies during a meeting with Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao (王文濤), who objected to US tariffs and trade policies, as well as issues related to Taiwan, their offices said. However, statements from the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce emphasized the need for Washington and Beijing to maintain communication on trade. “Ambassador Tai highlighted the need to address the critical imbalances caused by China’s state-led, non-market approach to the economy and trade policy,” the USTR said in a statement released after the
SYMBOLIC: The bill sponsored by a cross-party group of lawmakers was hailed as a ‘historic moment’ in the fight for marriage equality, but is unlikely to pass Lawmakers in South Korea have proposed the country’s first same-sex marriage bill, in a move hailed by civic groups as a defining moment in the fight for equality. The marriage equality bill, proposed by South Korean lawmaker Jang Hye-yeong of the minor opposition Justice Party and co-sponsored by 12 lawmakers across all the main parties, seeks to amend the country’s civil code to allow same-sex marriage. The bill is unlikely to pass, but forms part of a trio of bills expected to increase pressure on the government to expand the idea of family beyond traditional criteria. The two other bills relate to
RSS