AI SCAMS: VOICE CLONING COULD DRAIN YOUR BANK ACCOUNT! With AI capabilities growing daily, you need to be even more vigilant against potential scammers. We’ve already heard about AI’s power to create written content and, more recently, use musicians’ voices to sing different songs. So, how does this relate to scammers? Well, TikTok users and other online users have shared a new scam that utilizes AI to drain the bank accounts of their family members called voice cloning. Scammers looking to steal thousands of dollars will use AI to replicate the voices of people who’ve posted their voices online via videos like TikTok. They’ll clone a person’s voice and then use it to call their relatives and pretend to be their children or grandchildren who need money as soon as possible. The person on the phone is a scammer, not your family member, even though they sound just like them. Never send money without first verifying whether it is or isn’t your relative. Some online users advise creating secret code words to exchange over the phone to confirm their family member is requesting the money. Always contact your relative and ask if they actually made the call. Remember, anyone who has posted a short clip of their voice can find it cloned with AI and used to scam their families. Stay safe!
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situated next to my youngest brother, Paul’s, bedroom window. We let the dogs in and out of the pen through his window. We hid the keg in the doghouse and ran the tap in through the window in case my parents came downstairs. Eventually, Paul got the dogs and took them upstairs with the family. After a few minutes, my dad shouted for me to come up. I stood before my father and asked, “What’s up?” He was smoking his Lucky Strikes in the kitchen. He took a puff, “Do you see the dogs?” he pointed with his cigarette. “What’s wrong with this picture?” The dogs looked happy. Their tails were moving fast. I asked, “Did I forget to feed them?” Then my dad called Ralph over. Ralph got up, stumbled, and fell. He called Beaver, too. Beaver flailed on the kitchen linoleum and couldn’t even stand. I said that I had heard a lot of dogs were getting cerebral palsy nowadays. I could tell my father was not pleased with my diagnosis. He said, “Ok, wise guy.” He took a long drag on the cigarette. “Here’s what’s going to happen.” He pointed at me with his
cigarette finger. “Get rid of the beer. Send your friends home and clean up the mess. Then we’ll talk.” He blew a cloud of smoke in my face. I knew what “we’ll talk” meant. I wasn’t looking forward to it. It turns out there was a leak in the spigot on the keg. My dogs, Ralph and Beaver, sucked down a lot of foam and beer. Betrayed by man’s best friend. We stashed the keg in a snowbank behind the garage in the neighbor’s yard for another toga party the following weekend. I stalled as long as possible but eventually sent everyone home and faced the music. Bev didn’t seem impressed with the story, but I thought it was funny that the toga party was the first thing the Curran boys brought up when we met after 40 years. I hope Red is resting in peace. Mr. Travis and his band were the occasion for a lot of fun times.
Seeing someone after 40 years is quite a unique experience. Before I knew it, Ken, his brother, came out of nowhere. Ken was in the audience. He used to play the trumpet in the South band. The Currans totaled a gang of four handsome Irish boys. All were in the South High band. While I caught up with Dan, Ken told Bev about a series of toga parties I had organized. I thought I had shared everything with Bev about my earlier life. I missed a few episodes, I guess. Ken reminded me of some things I had even forgotten. You may remember the movie “Animal House.” It came out in the summer of my junior year — 1978. I thought togas were artistic, so I put together a couple parties with togas as the dress code. Ken remembered one party at my home that didn’t end well. We snuck a beer keg into the basement of my parents’ house. To hide the keg, we put it in the doghouse. We had a walkout basement, and our dog pen was next to the house. The pen was perfectly
–Christopher J. Grimmond
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