HISPI Project Cerebellum
AI Incidents

Scammers Reportedly Used AI Voice Clone and YouTube Footage to Impersonate WPP CEO in Unsuccessful Scam Attempt

May 10, 2024

Scammers reportedly attempted to impersonate WPP CEO Mark Read using AI-generated voice cloning and YouTube footage in a Microsoft Teams scam. They allegedly created a fake WhatsApp account with Read’s image and used deepfake audio to deceive an agency leader into setting up a new business. The scheme, which was unsuccessful, aimed to solicit money and personal data.
Alleged deployer
scammers-impersonating-mark-read, unknown-scammers
Alleged developer
unknown-voice-cloning-technology, unknown-deepfake-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
mark-read, wpp, wpp-employees, general-public

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/983

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.