AI has had such a massive impact on our lives in the past few years. It's hard to think about when it's all going to slow down. Some parts have been good and helpful, but other uses are just plain scary.
And one of those uses is in AI deepfakes. If you went back five years ago and said to the average person that in half a decade you'd be able to clone them on a video, they'd say you were lying.
But it's the sad and scary truth. And, as reported by People, this dark usage of AI is starting to be used in scams, too. Erika Anderson, a mom living in Jacksonville, Florida, has sent a chilling warning to parents across the country.
This is after she says she received a call from her 17-year-old daughter asking her to "open the door". But, it wasn't her daughter—she was at school.
In a TikTok she posted about the incident, she explained, "I just had something so scary happen to me. I got a FaceTime call from my daughter's phone, and she was like, 'Hey Mommy, I'm sick. Can you open the door?'"
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This was extra unusual given the routine they shared. "I take her to school, [and] I pick her up," she explained. In order to try and figure out what was going on, she started hurling questions at the strange daughter-esque "person" on the phone with her.
She Hung up the Phone and Checked on Her Daughter
Her immediate reaction after the AI deepfake was to contact her daughter's school. This is where she found out that she never FaceTimed Anderson at all—so her suspicions were correct.
Anderson is now fighting back against these deepfakes in a pretty clever way. And it might be one you use with your own kids. Codewords. They're quite easy to set up, and make sure you know that it's your kid or that your kid knows it's you.
"We have now made code words. I changed the alarm in my house. I changed the camera angles. As a matter of fact, we added two more cameras," she explained.
In any case, we're just glad everyone's okay. How scary is that!
