- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned of a fraud crisis from AI voice impersonation in finance
- Altman criticised financial institutions still using voiceprint authentication as security
- Voiceprint ID gained popularity over a decade ago for wealthy clients accessing accounts
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.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world
