China: AI conman mimics face of tycoon’s friend

A swindler used artificial intelligence to pose as the friend of a Chinese businessman on a video call and defraud him out of almost a million dollars.

A swindler used artificial intelligence technology to pose as the friend of a Chinese businessman on a video call and defraud him out of almost a million dollars.

Police said the victim, identified only as Guo, received the call last month from someone who looked and sounded like his close friend, who asked him to transfer money to him. The caller was a con artist who had used AI to alter their face and voice.

The incident has prompted officials to warn the public to be vigilant about the risks posed by AI. “The public must be more alert to ever-changing AI scams,” the police said. “Don’t provide biometric information, such as your face and fingerprints, to others. Don’t share videos excessively. Use multiple channels, including phone calls, to verify [someone’s] identity before making an online transfer.”

Guo, from Baotou, a city in the north of the country, was persuaded to transfer 4.3 million yuan ($928,000) when the fraudster claimed that another friend needed the money to come from a company bank account to pay the guarantee on a public tender. They asked for Guo’s personal bank account number and claimed that the sum had been sent to his account before the transfer from his company account.

The con artist sent Guo a screenshot of the alleged transaction. Without checking that he had received the money, Guo sent the payment and messaged his friend, saying: “It’s done.” He realised he had been scammed when his friend replied with a question mark.

“The scammer never said a word about borrowing but said he would first transfer the money to my account and I would then transfer the sum to his friend’s account,” Guo said. “We had a video call. I recognised the face and the voice, so I was relaxed.”

When Guo alerted the police they told the bank not to proceed with the transfers and he has recovered $739,000.

It is the latest in a string of fraud cases involving AI in China. In February scammers used videos posted by a friend of a Wenzhou resident to win the victim’s trust before swindling him out of $10,000. In 2021 another Wenzhou man was blackmailed after fraudsters used AI to superimpose his face on to pornography. In 2020 a businessman in Shanghai was defrauded after a conman pretended to be his boss using AI.

The pitfalls of the technology have received heightened attention since November when OpenAI, based in the United States, launched ChatGPT, a chatbot that mimics human speech.

China has announced plans to become a global leader in AI by 2030 and technology firms, including Alibaba, JD.com, NetEase and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, have rushed to develop similar products.

A Chinese law on AI-generated content stipulates that it must be clearly marked. Lawyers have also warned that unauthorised use of celebrities’ faces could be illegal.

ChatGPT is not available in China but the software is acquiring a base of Chinese users who use virtual private networks to gain access to it for writing essays and studying for exams.

This month police in Gansu, a province in the northwest, said “coercive measures” had been taken against a man who used ChatGPT to create a fake news article about a fatal bus crash, which was spread widely on social media.

THE TIMES