We are all vulnerable to the rapid spread of phone scams – including, it seems, world leaders. Thailand’s prime minister has revealed she got a call from an AI system, demanding money in the voice of another famous head of government.
Paetongtarn Shinawatra did not reveal who the computer was mimicking, but said she received a message in a voice identical to a well-known leader.
“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,” Paetongtarn said.
She said she later missed a call from the same number, then received a voice message which cut to the chase: “They sent another voice message asking for a donation, saying, ‘You are the only country in (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) that hasn’t donated yet,’ emphasizing it. I was taken aback for a moment and realized something was off.”
She said whoever sent the message “probably used AI to take the voice” of the unnamed world leader.
Scams or scam centers are not uncommon in Southeast Asia. In recent years, investigators say transnational crime organizations have exploited technological advances and the civil war in Myanmar to build a billion-dollar industry scamming people across the world.
In January, a Chinese actor flew to Bangkok for what he thought was a casting call for a movie. Instead, he was picked up at the airport and driven to a scam center in Myanmar’s Myawaddy, a notorious cyber-fraud hub across the border from Thailand.
This is also a problem for thousands of ordinary people who are lured to Thailand with the promise of white-collar jobs, before ultimately being trafficked to criminal hubs in Myanmar where they are held against their will and forced to steal millions in cryptocurrency.
While many of the scams currently use phone calls and traditional messaging, there have been warnings that, as AI technology advances in leaps and bounds, millions of people could fall victim to scams using artificial intelligence to clone their voices.
Last year, OpenAI, the maker of generative AI chatbot ChatGPT, unveiled its voice replication tool, Voice Engine, but didn’t make it available to the public at that stage, citing the “potential for synthetic voice misuse.”
Paetongtarn, who began her political career in 2021 as the chief of the Pheu Thai’s party Inclusion and Innovation Advisory Committee, became prime minister in August 2024.
She is the third member in her family’s political dynasty to serve as prime minister following her father and aunt, who served for five and three years respectively.