OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns of AI being used for voice fraud in banking

Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, has issued a stark warning to the financial sector, predicting a "significant impending fraud crisis" driven by artificial intelligence. He highlighted AI’s growing capability to impersonate human voices, allowing sophisticated bypasses of security protocols to illicitly transfer funds.

Speaking at a Federal Reserve conference in Washington, Mr Altman expressed particular alarm over outdated authentication methods. "A thing that terrifies me is apparently there are still some financial institutions that will accept the voiceprint as authentication," he stated. "That is a crazy thing to still be doing. AI has fully defeated that."

Voiceprinting, which involves customers uttering a challenge phrase to access accounts, gained popularity over a decade ago, particularly among wealthy bank clients. However, Mr Altman cautioned that AI-generated voice clones, and eventually video clones, are becoming increasingly "indistinguishable from reality," necessitating entirely new verification systems.

Michelle Bowman, the Fed’s Vice Chair for Supervision and the central bank’s top financial regulator, who hosted the discussion with Mr Altman, indicated a willingness to collaborate on solutions. "That might be something we can think about partnering on," she remarked.