Becoming Invisible, Part 18: Your Family Needs a "Safe Word"

Has anyone else been watching the 3I/Atlas story about the interstellar object passing through our solar system, igniting debate over whether it’s alien tech or just an ordinary rock? Some well-known scientists have appeared on YouTube, asserting that it’s clearly artificial.

Except that it’s those scientists who are artificial. Most are AI-generated impostors saying things the real scientists haven’t said, confusing viewers and throwing the space community into damage control mode.

This is disturbing if you’re fooled by such content — and even more so if you’re one of the people being impersonated.

But that’s just the tip of the AI deepfake iceberg. Now that it’s possible to create realistic versions of people saying unreal things, all kinds of horrendous scams are possible. Here’s a video explaining some of those scams, followed by a transcript of the worst one:

Transcript:

It’s like the evolution of clickbait, rage bait. We now have scare bait. So, I get a phone call. My daughter’s on the other line. She’s crying. She says, “Mom, I’ve been in a horrible car accident and I’m at the ER right now and they won’t give me any treatment because they won’t accept my insurance or something and someone from the hospital is going to call you.”

I get a phone call and the caller ID says the hospital name. The hospital associate says that they can’t accept her insurance and they can’t give her lifesaving treatment until they have some type of payment on record for her. I can’t use a credit card so I need to wire money and they’re just going to hold it as a deposit and I’ll be able to dispute this very easily with my insurance carrier.

Scammers are using caller ID spoofing where essentially they use software that hides their real phone number and they can select what they want their phone number to appear as. These scammers can choose, say, your mom’s phone number or a brother’s phone number and when they call you, your phone cannot distinguish that anything weird is happening. And so your phone still displays whatever contact information, image, whatever you’ve saved for her contact, it shows up as if it’s really her calling you.

But scammers are now combining caller ID spoofing, and when you answer the phone thinking it’s your mom, they have AI generated her voice so you believe it’s her. And they’re creating this urgency and this like life-threatening situation so that you won’t question. Logic goes out the window because you’re terrified for your loved one. And once they have people believing that they really have the loved one on the phone, they are asking them to send money.

Make a Safe Word

More from the above video:

If you’re unsure if it’s really your loved one or not, just hang up and call them back. They’re also recommending people have a safe word with their loved ones in case this happens. So, if you receive a weird call, you can ask for that safe word. And if they can’t give it to you, then you know it’s an AI generated voice.

Internet’s End?

The percentage of content on YouTube and X that feels like “AI slop” has already risen to the point that serious filtering measures are the only hope for saving social media. What those measures will be and whether they’ll succeed are stories for next year.

In the meantime, believe nothing and verify everything.