WASHINGTON (AP) — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman this week warned the financial industry of a “significant impending fraud crisis” because of the ability of artificial intelligence tools to impersonate a person’s voice to bypass security checks and move money.
“A thing that terrifies me is apparently there are still some financial institutions that will accept the voiceprint as authentication,” Altman said at a Federal Reserve conference. “That is a crazy thing to still be doing. AI has fully defeated that.”
Voiceprinting as an identification for wealthy bank clients grew popular more than a decade ago, with customers typically asked to utter a challenge phrase into the phone to access their accounts.
Yet now, artificial intelligence voice clones, and eventually video clones, can impersonate people in a way that Altman said is increasingly “indistinguishable from reality” and will require new methods for verification.
“That might be something we can think about partnering on,” said Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, the central bank’s top financial regulator, who was hosting the discussion with Altman.