A reader brought up an important point about the latest AI technology: “Interesting that this week you’d write about Bing and AI, a person who wanted to delete Edge/Bing, and the Grandparents Scam. There have been recent articles and news about risks of AI (also ChatGPT and TikTok) and vulnerabilities. There was also an interview of a mom who received a scam kidnappng call for ransom that had her daughter’s exact voice, which was created by AI. I know we have to be cautious but AI has many people concerned.”
I agree with you about the danger of scammers using AI but, of course, scammers will use anything at their disposal. Voice AI is an interesting technology, in that folks suffering from conditions that could rob them of their voice can actually clone their own voice for a fairly reasonable fee leaving them with a tool that will allow them to still speak to their family in their own voice. I’ve actually priced some voice AI tech myself as a possible solution for creating audiobooks using my own voice but saving myself the time and effort of the recording process.
Seeing with your own eyes and hearing with your own ears may no longer be a guarantee that something is true. We’ll all need to apply the same level of caution to any type of communication that we should currently use for emails and messages.
I’ve also used Midjourney’s graphics AI to create a few images like the artwork for my upcoming book cover.
And also some artwork for a recent library appearance.
While there’s a risk of others using AI for nefarious purposes, I don’t necessarily think it’s particularly risky to use the AI in Bing, well no riskier than using Bing or Google on any day as they have been collecting that information all along and using AI to predict your behavior better, they’ve just only now started to share that ability with you.
I, too, share a great deal of concern about TikTok because of the access the Chinese Government has to the data. While it’s not necessarily what we usually consider personal data like your SSN or bank information, the understanding of Americans’ habits and interests and the ability to predict our behavior is a bit unnerving in the hands of an economic competitor that has played pretty loose with rules.