Srinagar: Criminals have found an innovative method to loot money from naïve people by using computer-generated voice sounds of victims’ friends and relatives. All this they are doing with the help of Artificial Intelligence based applications.

Jammu Kashmir Police in this regard have issued an advisory asking people to stay alert.

“The Artificial Intelligence-based voice cloning is the new cyber crime in news. Apple Ios7 and various apps and sites like Heyge, Murf and Resemble Al etc. are being used for voice cloning,” police in advisory has noted.

The advisory reads that the criminals are using computer generated voice sound to act as friends and relatives and in the process, money can be lost.

Sharing the modus operandi, police said that the Ai-ml (artificial intelligence/ machine learning) model learns the patterns and characteristics from the person’s voice recordings. (speech patterns, accents, voice inflection and even breathing).

Police stated that learning includes pronunciation of words, tone of the voice and emotions. Now criminals use this Al-ml model to convert text to speech as it generates a waveform to represent the sound of any person.”

“The computer-generated call is then used by the criminal to call his/her relatives or friends and based upon the familiarity of the voice, the victim ends up paying the money,” he said.

Police however, spreading awareness on the concern said that the receiver must listen carefully to unnatural pause or robotic speech styles, look for errors in pronunciation or speaking tone.

“The voice can be compared with the original person and notice if the voice lacks emotional expression or difference.”

“The receiver must always try to call the original person with the saved number to recheck, adding, “the voice sample or recordings shall not be shared to an unknown person while limiting access to sensitive voice recordings or audio files.”