AI Voice Cloning of Ari Melber Allegedly Exploited in Scam Targeting Elderly Woman

December 16, 2024

A 73-year-old woman named Patricia Taylor was allegedly defrauded by a scammer who exploited AI-generated voice messages resembling MSNBC anchor Ari Melber, along with a fabricated social media profile. Over a span of four months, the scammer deceptively led her to believe they were in a relationship before persuading her to send $20,000. This incident underscores the importance of responsible AI governance and trustworthy AI practices to prevent such harm.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.598, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.597, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.594, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: unknown-scammers
Alleged developer: unknown-voice-synthesis-technology-developers, unknown-deepfake-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties: patricia-taylor, family-of-patricia-taylor, ari-melber

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/872

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.