Thailand’s prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was recently saved from falling into a trap set up by an AI-powered voice scam. The scamster impersonated a famous world leader, cloned his voice via AI and demanded money from Shinawatra, showing how heads of governments are also vulnerable to such phone scams.
Though she did not disclose who the AI-voice scam was mimicking, Shinawatra said she had received a voice message that sounded like a famous leader. She was speaking at the 5th ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Digital Ministers’ Meeting on Monday.
“The voice was very clear, and I recognized it immediately. They first sent a voice clip, saying something like, ‘How are you? I want to work together,’ and so on,” she said.
She said that they sent another voice message asking for a donation, saying, ‘You are the only country in ASEAN that hasn’t donated yet,’ emphasizing it,” Shinawatra added after missing a call from the same number and receiving a direct message. She said she was momentarily surprised and became aware that something was wrong.
The sender “probably used AI to take the voice” of the world leader, she claimed.
In Southeast Asia, scams and scam centres are not unusual. Investigators claim that transnational crime groups have developed a billion-dollar industry of defrauding people worldwide in recent years by taking advantage of technological advancements and the civil war in Myanmar.
A Chinese actor came to Bangkok in January for what he believed to be a casting call for a film. Instead, he was driven to a scam centre in Myawaddy, Myanmar, a well-known cyber-fraud hotspot across the border from Thailand, after being picked up at the airport.
This issue also affects thousands of common people who are drawn to Thailand under the pretext of white-collar jobs only to be trafficked to criminal hotspots in Myanmar, where they are detained against their will and compelled to steal millions in cryptocurrency.
Although phone calls and conventional text messages are still used by many scammers today, there have been concerns that millions of people may become victims of frauds that utilise AI to clone their voices as technology develops rapidly.
OpenAI, the company behind the generative AI chatbot ChatGPT, introduced Voice Engine, a voice replication tool last year but chose not to make it publicly accessible at that time due to the “potential for synthetic voice misuse.”
Shinawatra became prime minister in August 2024 after starting her political career in 2021 as the head of the Pheu Thai party’s Inclusion and Innovation Advisory Committee.
After her father and aunt, who held the position for five and three years, respectively, she is the third member of her family’s political dynasty to hold the position.