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

May 10, 2024

Scammers reportedly attempted an unsuccessful deepfake scam by using AI-generated voice clones and manipulated YouTube footage to impersonate WPP CEO Mark Read on Microsoft Teams. The scammers created a fake WhatsApp account with Read’s image, and used the deepfake audio to deceive an agency leader into setting up a new business. This incident highlights the need for trustworthy AI governance and safe and secure practices to prevent such incidents in the future.

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Matched TAIM controls

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

GOVERN 2.2 — similarity 0.566, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
GOVERN 1.7 — similarity 0.563, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
GOVERN 1.2 — similarity 0.558, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

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.