OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns of a looming fraud crisis in the financial industry due to AI’s ability to mimic voices. Speaking at a Federal Reserve conference on Tuesday, Altman criticized financial institutions still using voiceprints for authentication. He called this practice outdated, as AI can now create voice clones that are nearly indistinguishable from real voices. Voiceprinting became popular over a decade ago for wealthy clients but is now vulnerable to AI-driven fraud. Altman emphasized the need for new verification methods. The central bank’s top regulator Michelle Bowman suggested exploring partnerships to address these challenges.
WASHINGTON (AP) — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned the financial industry of a “significant impending fraud crisis” because of the ability of artificial intelligence tools to impersonate a person's voice to bypass security checks and move money.
Altman spoke at a Federal Reserve conference Tuesday in Washington.
“A thing that terrifies me is apparently there are still some financial institutions that will accept the voiceprint as authentication,” Altman said. “That is a crazy thing to still be doing. AI has fully defeated that.”
Voiceprinting as an identification for wealthy bank clients grew popular more than a decade ago, with customers typically asked to utter a challenge phrase into the phone to access their accounts.
But now AI voice clones, and eventually video clones, can impersonate people in a way that Altman said is increasingly “indistinguishable from reality” and will require new methods for verification.
“That might be something we can think about partnering on,” said Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, the central bank’s top financial regulator, who was hosting the discussion with Altman.
