How scammers can persuade you with AI
UC research cited in reports on phone scams
Spectrum News recently dove into how cloning voices with artificial intelligence is making it easier to scam people over the phone.
The news outlet spoke with Kimberly Hyun, assistant professor of marketing at UC’s Lindner College of Business, to examine why AI is making it so much easier to trick people.
“It’s actually more creepy and scary than faces,” Hyun told Spectrum News. “Because faces you immediately know, but voices are so subtle. It actually influences you in very subconscious ways.”
Hyun's research on vocal timbre can help explain why phone scams are getting smarter. Photo/provided
As a marketing professor and researcher, Hyun specializes in the power of persuasion, specifically through the use of our voices. In her recent study, she found that a consumer’s guard is lowered when speaking to someone that sounds familiar.
Hyun’s persuasion study was also explored in StudyFinds and Inc. Magazine, who broke down how she used “Shark Tank” episodes to compare vocal similarity as part of her research.
As voice cloning technology gets more advanced, it is becoming easier for malicious actors to use it to trick people.
Hyun recommended creating a family “safe code” that can be used to verify if a caller talking about an emergency is actually someone you know.
“Your grandma calls and asks for money,” Hyun told Spectrum News. “Just be aware that it might be an AI doing it.”
More UC marketing research in the news
Hyun explained in a Nautilus interview that more people are likely using voice recognition today because many AI search engines offer voice activation.
“Over time, companies and researchers have collected thousands and millions of samples of human voices. Voice-identification technology has also improved over time. We’re using it daily,” Hyun told Nautilus.
All that data can be used to train AI to sound more realistic, and more dangerous in the wrong hands.
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Featured image at top of a hand holding a smartphone with data overlay. Photo/Adobe Stock/Tero Vesalainen
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