Two parents thought they were living a nightmare when they received a call from their daughter saying she had been abducted in early July. However, it wasn’t really their daughter on the other end of the line. Now, they suspect that voice cloning may have played a role in the very bad joke.
What there is to know
- A father received a call from someone claiming to be his daughter and telling him that she had been kidnapped.
- The father and his wife found their daughter safe and sound at the holiday camp where she had been since the beginning of the day.
- The parents do not know the reason for the call, but suggest that their daughter’s voice may have been imitated using voice cloning, a technology that is widely available but still little used for fraud, according to experts.
Daniel* had just arrived at work when he received a call from an unknown number on the morning of July 8. On the other end of the line, his daughter’s voice rang out, tinged with panic. “It was very disjointed, she kept saying, ‘Dad, come get me, I don’t feel well,’” says the Montrealer.
The 13-year-old said she was drugged and taken away in a car after arriving at her day camp in Montreal. She gave an address in Brossard and begged her father to come get her. “I called the police and my wife [et] “I left by car to find my daughter,” he adds.
Marie-Ève*, Daniel’s wife, rushed to her day camp. “I ran four red lights, I was crying my life away, I was in total distress,” she recalls.
But when she arrived at the camp, Marie-Ève found her daughter safe and sound. “She didn’t understand why I was panicking, she didn’t know anything,” she said. The police, who arrived in Brossard before Daniel, found “no one” at the address given by the voice on the phone, the mother added.
Since then, the parents say they are waiting for a follow-up from the Montreal Police Department (SPVM) to understand how their daughter’s voice was able to be reproduced so well. “Did artificial intelligence imitate our daughter? Was it fraud, or just a dirty trick? We have no answers,” says Marie-Ève.
Voice Cloning
Daniel remains disturbed by the similarity between the voice he heard on the phone and that of his daughter. “She had the same slight accent as my daughter. If it was an imitation, well, it was really very faithful,” he emphasizes. Marie-Ève, for her part, suggests that her daughter’s voice may have been cloned.
A hypothesis that is not improbable, according to Ludovic Soucisse, director of communications at Mila – Quebec Institute of Artificial Intelligence. “We are seeing more and more cases of fraud and identity theft that use artificial intelligence,” he explains.
The technology needed for voice cloning is available to the general public, according to Mr. Soucisse.
It is very easy to reproduce someone’s voice and accent realistically. It takes, according to the applications on the market, a small three-second clip of the voice only.
Ludovic Soucisse, Director of Communications at Mila – Quebec Institute of Artificial Intelligence
“Voice cloning is a readily available technology,” acknowledged the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC), adding however that “given the volume of calls made by fraudsters, it is also unlikely that voice cloning is commonly used.”
In uncertainty
According to the CAFC, the case of Marie-Ève and Daniel “seems very similar to the grandparents scam.” Several people in Canada have been victims of this telephone fraud, where people try to pretend to be a family member in distress in order to get money from them.
However, Daniel was not asked for a ransom or bail by the voice on the phone. The mother now questions the motives of the call. “What would have happened if my boyfriend had arrived at the Brossard house before the police? Were people waiting to attack him? It’s insecure,” she says.
The SPVM was unable to provide details on the event, for confidentiality reasons.
Marie-Ève and Daniel have caught their breath since the call, but they hope that a police investigation will help them see things more clearly. “Yes, all’s well that ends well, but we still have so many questions,” says the mother.
* The parents only gave their first names, for fear of reprisals.