An unnamed energy company has been defrauded of $243,000 by scammers who used artificial intelligence to mimic the voice of its chief executive officer.

In an incident detailed by The Wall Street Journal, the scammers used the technology in a phone call with the CEO of a U.K. subsidiary of the unnamed German company to order a transfer of funds to a Hungarian supplier. The U.K. CEO believed that he was talking to his German chief and transferred the funds.

Those behind the fraud attempted the trick again, but the U.K. subsidiary became suspicious as staff noticed that the calls were originating from Austria, not Germany. The funds were transferred from a Hungarian bank to an account in Mexico before being transferred elsewhere. No suspects have been identified.

The case is claimed by officials cited by the Journal as being the first time in which fraudsters “clearly” leverages AI to mimic someone’s voice to fraudulently trick a company into transferring funds but it may not be alone. A report from the BBC in July noted that security firm Symantec Corp. has seen three cases “of seemingly deepfaked audio of different chief executives used to trick senior financial controllers into transferring cash.”

Deepfakes is primarily a term applied to human image synthesis based on artificial intelligence, the generation of fake videos that use technology to provide realistic results but has also come to apply in some cases to fake voice generation as well.

The rise of deepfakes raises concern as the technology delivers results that is often indescribable from real video and audio opening up a Pandora’s box of potential fraud and manipulation. A deepfake video of Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg in June was said at the time to be a sign of things to come.

The news comes as privacy concerns have been raised following the release of a Chinese deepfake app called Zao. The app allows users to superimpose their photo on top of celebrities and other public figures in movie clips.

The results, deliverable in under eight seconds, are remarkable, as are the implications of the technology as it continues to improve.

In case you haven't heard, #ZAO is a Chinese app which completely blew up since Friday. Best application of 'Deepfake'-style AI facial replacement I've ever seen.

Here's an example of me as DiCaprio (generated in under 8 secs from that one photo in the thumbnail) 🤯 pic.twitter.com/1RpnJJ3wgT

— Allan Xia (@AllanXia) September 1, 2019

“The fear is that if someone were to potentially upload a picture of a public figure, a celebrity or someone else, they could easily make it seem as though that person was doing something that never happened,” CNBC reported.

Photo: Pixabay