Artificial-intelligence voice is used in a theft - The Washington Post

The request was "rather strange," the director noted later in an email, but the voice was so lifelike that he felt he had no choice but to comply. The insurer, whose case was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, provided new details on the theft to The Washington Post on Wednesday, including an email from the employee tricked by what the insurer is referring to internally as "the false Johannes." Now being developed by a wide range of Silicon Valley titans and AI start-ups, such voice-synthesis software can copy the rhythms and intonations of a person's voice and be used to produce convincing speech. Tech giants such as Google and smaller firms such as the "ultrarealistic voice cloning" start-up Lyrebird have helped refine the resulting fakes and made the tools more widely available free for unlimited use. But the synthetic audio and AI-generated videos, known as "deepfakes," have fueled growing anxieties over how the new technologies can erode public trust, empower criminals and make traditional communication -- business deals, family phone calls, presidential campaigns -- that much more vulnerable to computerized manipulation.