Scammers cloned billionaire Sunil Mittal's voice with AI to con his executive: Report

Mittal recounted how the said executive stationed in Dubai received a fraudulent call that seemed to mimic his voice.

Scammers often use AI voice clones to con commoners to transfer money or disclose financial information but it's rare when they try to impersonate a billionaire. This is exactly what scammers tried to do by cloning telecom czar Sunil Bharti Mittal's voice to scam his executive in Dubai to transfer money.

Fortunately, the executive was smart enough to realise Mittal won't ask for such a huge money transfer and the scam was stopped in its tracks.

On Monday, speaking at the NDTV World Summit, Mittal cited the incident to caution people about the risks posed by misuse of emerging technologies like AI.

Mittal recounted how the said executive stationed in Dubai received a fraudulent call that seemed to mimic his voice and tone and directed that a large fund transfer be done.

The official who was vigilant and "sensible" immediately realised it was a scam, Mittal said admitting that when he heard the voice recording himself he was completely "stunned" as "it was perfectly articulated just as I would speak".

"And anyone who would not have been vigilant may have done something about it," Mittal said and warned that in future misuse of technology would enable fraudsters to go a step ahead and misuse digital signatures, even replicate faces on zoom calls to perpetrate such acts.

"We'll have to protect our societies from the evils of AI, and yet we have to use the goodness of AI, because those companies, and nations that will not adopt AI will be left behind. So this is a conundrum for every time you get a new technology into place, there are pluses and minuses. I remain very optimistic about the benefit of AI that the human race will achieve and be able to do jobs which are otherwise very difficult to perform," Mittal said.