Australian Journalist Able to Access Centrelink Account Using AI Audio of Own Voice

March 15, 2023

An Australian Guardian journalist gained unauthorized access to their own Centrelink self-service account using AI-generated audio of their voice along with their customer reference number. This incident, following the deployment of voiceprint for ID verification, highlights the importance of trustworthy AI and robust security measures.

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Matched TAIM controls

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

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.671, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.667, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.651, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: australian-taxation-office, services-australia
Alleged developer: centrelink
Alleged harmed parties: centrelink-account-holders

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/523

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.