Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has warned the financial industry of a “significant impending fraud crisis,” of artificial intelligence being used to impersonate a person’s voice to bypass security checks and move money.
“A thing that terrifies me is apparently there are still some financial institutions that will accept the voiceprint as authentication,” Altman said. “That is a crazy thing to still be doing. AI has fully defeated that,” he said at a Federal Reserve Conference in Washington D.C. on Tuesday.
Voiceprinting has been used as an identification method for wealthy clients since nearly a decade ago. However, Altman believes this method is now no longer completely secure since AI can be deployed to create voice clones that are “indistinguishable from reality.” “That might be something we can think about partnering on,” said Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, the central bank’s top financial regulator.
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Altman’s comments were part of an interview on the wide-ranging social and economic impact of AI. This comes shortly before the White House is expected to release its “AI action plan,” a policy document to outline its approach to regulating the technology and promoting America’s dominance in the AI space. OpenAI has provided recommendations for this plan, and has ramped up its presence on and around Capitol Hill of late.
The company has confirmed on Tuesday it will open its first Washington, D.C., office early next year to house its approximately 30-person workforce in the city. Chan Park, OpenAI’s head of global affairs for the U.S. and Canada, will lead the new office alongside Joe Larson, who is leaving defense technology company Anduril to become OpenAI’s vice president of government. This space will be used to host policymakers, preview new technology, and provide AI training, for example, to teachers and government officials, as well as for research into the economic impact of AI, and how to improve access to the technology.
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Despite mentioning concerns, OpenAI has urged the Trump administration to avoid regulation, saying that could hamper tech companies’ ability to compete with foreign AI innovations. Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate voted to strike a controversial provision from Trump’s agenda bill that would have prevented states from enforcing AI-related laws for 10 years.
Altman is not alone in bringing up concerns about AI voice cloning technology being misused. The FBI warned about these AI voice and video “cloning” scams last year. Multiple parents have reported that AI voice technology was used in attempts to trick them out of money by convincing them that their children were in trouble. Earlier this month, U.S. officials warned that someone was using AI to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s voice, to contact foreign ministers, a U.S. governor and a member of Congress. “I am very nervous that we have an impending, significant, impending fraud crisis,” Altman said.