Voice-enabled AI agents can automate everything, even your phone scams
Scammers, rejoice. OpenAI's real-time voice API can be used to build AI agents capable of conducting successful phone call scams for less than a dollar.
There have been concerns that letting AI models interact with convincing, simulated voices might lead to abuse. OpenAI in June delayed its advanced Voice Mode in ChatGPT, which supports real-time conversation between human and model, over safety concerns. This was after OpenAI demonstrated a voice that sounded like celebrity Scarlett Johansson, only to withdraw it after an outcry that the mimicry was done without her consent.
The Realtime API, released earlier this month, provides a more or less equivalent capability to third-party developers. It allows developers to pass text or audio to OpenAI's GPT-4o model and have it respond with text, audio, or both.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) set out to test whether the Realtime API can be used to automate phone scams.
