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OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said he is concerned that financial firms aren’t adequately dealing with a rise in artificial intelligence-enabled scams against bank customers, highlighting a chief concern of lenders as the emerging technology grows more sophisticated.
“I am very nervous about this,” Altman told a packed room of bank executives and regulators on Tuesday during a conference held by the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C.
“A thing that terrifies me is, apparently, there are still some financial institutions that will accept a voice print as authentication,” he said. “For you to move a lot of money, or do something else, you say a challenge phrase, and they just do it. That is a crazy thing to still be doing.”
AI has “fully defeated that,” Altman said in an onstage interview with Michelle Bowman, the Fed’s top banking regulator as its recently confirmed vice chair for supervision. AI has “fully defeated most of the ways that people authenticate currently, other than passwords,” he said.
“But all of these fancy, you know—take a selfie and wave, or hear your voice, or whatever, I am very nervous that we have an impending—a significant impending fraud crisis because of this,” he said.
Altman’s firm created ChatGPT, which popularized generative AI in the mainstream when it was launched in late 2022. With ChatGPT’s introduction, and the new ways individuals and companies are using AI tools, regulators have cautioned the public to be vigilant of scammers who abuse AI and could put consumers’ money and identities in jeopardy.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, said in an alert it issued last year that more financial institutions are reporting that they suspect people are using “deepfake media, particularly the use of fraudulent identity documents to circumvent identity verification and authentication methods.”
Banks have long used AI to help identify suspicious patterns in consumers’ transaction data, like scouring unusual purchases for signs that their credit card information may have been stolen.
On Tuesday, Altman said the spread of financial fraud attempts through voice calls—impersonating a person’s child or parent requesting money, for instance—could take on new forms.
“Right now, it’s a voice call. Soon, it’s going to be a video FaceTime and be indistinguishable from reality,” he said, adding that it is important for people to learn how to authenticate requests and avoid schemes.
Bowman responded with a signal that the central bank may seek out new ways of using AI to combat these problems.
“That might be something we could think about partnering on, the identification of those hallucinations, or the intentional impersonations,” she said. “I think it would be a really beneficial thing to engage in.”
Banks and fund managers around the world are on guard for these types of malicious activities that use AI to target customers’ cash. They are also embracing AI—sometimes aggressively, depending on the company—to try to make money, save money, or keep a competitive edge.
OpenAI sells products to financial firms to automate their employees’ tasks, draft reports, and analyze data. It would benefit from more companies becoming aware of how they might use AI tools.
“I promise I didn’t come here for the TV commercial,” Altman joked at the conference of industry insiders on Tuesday, “but we’d love to work with any of you, of course.”
Write to Rebecca Ungarino at rebecca.ungarino@barrons.com
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