This one’s in Schwyz, in Switzerland, which makes reading of the original story somewhat difficult. But we can safely say that “Eine unbekannte Täterschaft hat zur Täuschung künstliche Intelligenz eingesetzt und so mehrere Millionen Franken erbeutet” is NOT a good thing.
And that’s millions of Swiss francs, not millions of Al Frankens.
“Deploying audio manipulated to sound like a trusted business partner, fraudsters bamboozled an entrepreneur from the canton of Schwyz into transferring “several million Swiss francs” to a bank account in Asia.”
Bredemarket works with a number of technologies, but it’s no secret that my primary focus is biometrics. After all, I call myself the “biometric product marketing expert,” having worked with friction ridge (fingerprint, palm print), face, iris, voice, and rapid DNA.
The biometric product marketing expert in the desert.
If I can help your biometric firm with your content, proposal, or analysis needs, schedule a free meeting with me to discuss how I can help.
While the deepfake video generators that fraudsters use can be persuasive, the 6-second videos created by the free version of Grok haven’t reached that level of fakery. Yet.
In my experience, Grok is better at re-creating well-known people with more distinctive appearances. Good at Gene Simmons and Taylor Swift. Bad at Ace Frehley and Gerald Ford.
So I present…Willie Nelson.
Grok.
Willie with two turntables and a microphone, and one of his buds watching.
If you thought “Stardust” was odd for him, listen to this.
Once Grok created the video, I customized it to have Willie rap about bud.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, it doesn’t sound like the real Willie.
And for the, um, record, Nelson appeared in Snoop’s “My Medicine” video.
As an added bonus, here’s Grok’s version of Cher, without audio customization. It doesn’t make me believe…
Grok.
Reminder to marketing leaders: if you need Bredemarket’s content-proposal-analysis help, book a meeting at https://bredemarket.com/mark/
Inland Empire locals know why THIS infamous song is stuck in my head today.
“Blame It On The Rain,” (not) sung by Milli Vanilli.
For those who don’t know the story, Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan performed as the band Milli Vanilli and released an extremely successful album produced by Frank Farian. The title? “Girl You Know It’s True.”
But while we were listening to and watching Pilatus and Morvan sing, we were actually hearing the voices of Charles Shaw, John Davis, and Brad Howell. So technically this wasn’t a modern deepfake: rather than imitating the voice of a known person, Shaw et al were providing the voice of an unknown person. But the purpose was still deception.
Anyway, the ruse was revealed, Pilatus and Morvan were sacrificed, and things got worse.
“Pilatus, in particular, found it hard to cope, battling substance abuse and legal troubles. His tragic death in 1998 from a suspected overdose marked a sad epilogue to the Milli Vanilli saga.”
But there were certainly other examples of voice deepfakes in the 20th century…take Rich Little.
So deepfake voices aren’t a new problem. It’s just that they’re a lot easier to create today…which means that a lot of fraudsters can use them easily.
And if you are an identity/biometric marketing leader who needs Bredemarket’s help to market your anti-deepfake product, schedule a free meeting with me at https://bredemarket.com/mark/.
Biometric marketing leaders, do your firm’s product marketing publications require the words of authority?
John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket, the biometric product marketing expert.
Can John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket—the biometric product marketing expert—contribute words of authority to your content, proposal, and analysis materials?
I offer:
30 years of biometric experience, 10 years of product marketing expertise, and complementary proposal and product management talents.
Success with numerous biometric firms, including Incode, IDEMIA, MorphoTrak, Motorola, Printrak, and over a dozen biometric consulting clients.