The Indicator from Planet Money Fighting AI with AI
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Oct 6, 2025 Voice deepfakes can clone anyone's voice in seconds, posing serious risks, especially for banks. A company called Reality Defender is on a mission to combat this rising threat by using advanced detection methods. They stress the importance of not relying solely on voice for security, advocating for multi-factor authentication. The podcast also explores the alarming tactics scammers use, like creating urgency, and the necessity of government regulation to protect consumers from AI-related fraud.
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Prank Reveals How Convincing Cloned Voices Can Be
- The hosts prank a colleague using a cloned AI voice that asks for gift cards and initially fools them.
- The experiment shows how plausible short voice deepfakes can be in urgent-sounding scenarios.
Voice Cloning Is Fueling Large-Scale Fraud
- Millions of Americans have lost money to scam calls using AI-cloned voices, sometimes losing thousands.
- The rise of vocal deepfakes has turned voice identity into an unreliable authentication factor.
Founder Saw AI Fraud Coming From Finance
- Ben Coleman left Goldman Sachs and co-founded Reality Defender in 2021 to fight AI-enabled fraud.
- He predicted AI avatars and virtual-human scams before the term 'deepfake' and generative AI became mainstream.