“Mom, dad, I had an accident.” You hear the voice of a loved one in the earpiece. Police warn

There is no need to convince anyone how much AI tools have developed in recent years. Just look at the realistic images, audio recordings and video materials that generative artificial intelligence models can generate today.

Unfortunately, this development also has its dark side, which is undoubtedly the deepfake phenomenon. Fraudsters use the image of popular people to attract the attention of potential victims, gain their trust and then extort money. In such a fake recording, a celebrity may, for example, encourage you to make a risky investment or to install an application with malware embedded in it.

What’s worse, by using deepfake tools, criminals can impersonate not only celebrities, but also people close to us – our children, siblings or spouse. All they need is a sample of a person’s voice (e.g. from a recording posted on Facebook), and appropriate software will be able to generate a realistic recording on this basis.

The creation that is created in this way can be used by fraudsters in the process of gaining the trust of crime victims. Considering how many people share various materials and videos on social media, it is not difficult to obtain such a sample

– explains the Police Headquarters.

Accident scams. They clone voices to extort money

, criminals are increasingly using such prepared recordings to extort our money. It’s about the so-called accident scam. This method involves the caller telling a made-up story about a crisis situation.

As explained by the Police Headquarters, the scenario of such frauds usually looks similar. The targeted victim, most often an elderly or lonely person, receives a phone call from an alleged family member. In the earpiece you will hear the voice of, for example, your daughter, son or grandson: “Mom, grandma, grandpa, I had an accident. I hit a pregnant woman at a pedestrian crossing, I need money quickly so as not to end up in prison.”

Often, people who receive such a call are fully aware that this type of fraud is a very popular phenomenon and they know well how the fraudsters operate, but despite this, they believe in the story presented to them and their emotions take over. Then all the previously memorized rules stop counting

– explain the police.

The Police Headquarters points out that during the May holiday, when many people decide to leave home, there may be many more attempts at “just in case scams”. How to protect yourself against them? To do this, remember a few ironclad rules:

• Set a password with your loved ones that only you will know, so that in a crisis situation you can quickly and easily verify the identity of the interlocutor.
• Be careful when contacting a stranger, if someone calls us impersonating a member of our family and asks for money, do not take any rash actions.
• Call someone from your family or a person who is asking for money, after successfully hanging up on the person asking for help, be sure to dial the number from the numeric keyboard and ask whether the person who asked for help is actually in need.
• Never provide passwords, logins, transfers or BLIK payments over the phone.
• Don’t tell anyone over the phone how much money you have or how you keep it.
• If there is any suspicion that this may be a fraud, be sure to notify the police – telephone number 112.