Some thoughts on how to stop Grandma being scammed by AI

January 24, 2025

I’ve been thinking about an AI thing I'm genuinely worried about, and thought I would share some suggestions to protect yourself...

I did a little experiment the other day where I took a handful of photos of myself and a snippet of my voice and then I made a virtual video copy of myself that I can have a conversation with online and it will talk back to me in my voice (which is half cool that it’s interactive) BUT!

It can go to Zoom calls. I can feed it some documents as a knowledge base and I can send it off to a meeting and it can pretend to be me and attend the meeting and talk to the people and answer questions and make plans and do all the things that I would do.

Ok fine. Sounds cool. If you want to send your virtual self to a meeting while you stay in bed, go for it.

But here’s what’s freaking me out.

You know all those scammers that text grandma and pretend to be you and say you’ve lost your phone and can she send money? Australians are already falling for those scams and losing millions of dollars a year.

Ok so now they can video call grandma impersonating a family member and ask for the money that way - so the advice we’ve been giving which is get on a phone call or get on a video call is actually completely obsolete now and quite dangerous.

And also for businesses…

There was a news story recently about an European engineering company finance employee who transferred USD$25M to scammers. They used AI to fake the company's CFO on a video call.

Scary part? If I can spend $29 a month to buy the tool that makes these virtual clones and another $39 a month to buy an automation tool that will produce 100 of these every 10 minutes what will the scammers with huge banks of technology do?

IMPORTANT: Set up a family password RIGHT NOW. Make it something only your real family would know. If anyone - even if they look and sound exactly like your kid or grandkid - jumps on a video call asking for money or personal details in a panic, ask for that password first. No password = no monies. If you are worried about people not remembering the password make it a family story that nobody outside your family would know.

Business people: You need this too. At minimum. That unfortunate finance employee I mentioned? They thought they were talking to their actual CFO and others in the management team. The technology can do that now.

PS remember this technology doesn’t just make a video recording of you. It can make an interactive one which can actually turn up at online meetings. I guess all those people working from home and secretly working three jobs have now solved the problem of how do they cope with clashing meetings in their diaries!

PPS Feel free to share this article as I think it’s important.