Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 1: I'm Osvoloshin and today Kara Price and I will bring
Speaker 1: you the headlines this week, well tariffs, obviously, but also
Speaker 1: a dating game. Then on Tech Support, we'll talk to
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal's Family and Tech columnist Julie Jargon
Speaker 1: about a mother's worst fear, a cry for help over
Speaker 1: the phone that sounded like her youngest daughter, all of
Speaker 1: that on the Weekend Tech. It's Friday, April eleventh. Kara, Hello, Hello, Hello, ohs.
Speaker 2: I think I'm going to start this thing called Kara's
Speaker 2: Hats of the Week. And just for people who can't
Speaker 2: see me, I'm wearing a hat today that says, and
Speaker 2: this is from a show called Summer Heatsie. If you
Speaker 2: ever watched Summerheatsie, I'm a naughty girl with a bad habit.
Speaker 1: What is the bad habit in the.
Speaker 2: Show, It's for drugs. If I had preempted today's top story,
Speaker 2: it would have said, with a bad habit for tariffs.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. That would have been fast fashion. Indeed, that's
Speaker 1: a good one. But today's news is all about quote.
Speaker 1: The most beautiful word in the dictionary.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know anything about the dictionary, but I
Speaker 2: looked up the word tariff with chat GPT.
Speaker 1: The Dictionary twenty twenty five correct.
Speaker 2: Correct, and the thesaurus and also what we'll eventually write
Speaker 2: someone's wedding vesse. I asked chat Gpt what a tariff is,
Speaker 2: and she responded because she's a she yea in my book.
Speaker 2: In your book, a tariff is a tax or fee
Speaker 2: that a government imposes on imported or exported goods. But
Speaker 2: most importantly, chat Gpt says tariffs can impact the price
Speaker 2: of goods, trade relationships, and the global economy.
Speaker 1: Oh my prophetic soul can and do.
Speaker 2: Chat Gipt was onto something there because Trump's tariff announcement
Speaker 2: definitely shook up the global economy and trade relationships, and
Speaker 2: everything is still evolving. I mean, there's basically a new
Speaker 2: update every hour. Just this week, tariffs on about ninety
Speaker 2: countries went into effect. Then Trump issued a pause on
Speaker 2: most of them. But the country who's been pummeled the
Speaker 2: most is China. As of Thursday midday, Trump has increased
Speaker 2: tariffs on the country's imports by one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: five percent. So with everything going on, the technology industry
Speaker 2: has been feeling some effects.
Speaker 1: There's a headline in the Washington Post earlier this week
Speaker 1: that was delicious in its understated irony. Big tech bet
Speaker 1: on Trump. It's still waiting for the payoff.
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking about when we first started this version
Speaker 2: of tech stuff. All of those tech bros were at
Speaker 2: the inauguration, and now they're all scrambling to rethink their
Speaker 2: supply chains.
Speaker 1: But it's also about the threat of reciprocal tariffs. And
Speaker 1: in that Washington Post story, the writers quip those tech
Speaker 1: giants are in another front row, lol, not the front
Speaker 1: row the inauguration as targets for US trade partners looking
Speaker 1: for ways to strike back at the US economy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I heard at one point the EU is considering
Speaker 2: tariffs on digital products like Netflix subscriptions and Google Cloud storage,
Speaker 2: which I honestly didn't even know was possible. But another
Speaker 2: area of concern for the tech industry is how these
Speaker 2: tariffs will affect semiconductors, because they really do power the
Speaker 2: modern world. Everything from consumer tech, data centers, even cars,
Speaker 2: they all use semiconductors.
Speaker 1: And here's where the kind of ironies continue to abound, because,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, President Trump has made AI supremacy
Speaker 1: a key element of his policy for this term, and
Speaker 1: so technically the tariffs announce an exemption for semiconductors, but
Speaker 1: as it turns out, many of the semiconductors imported are
Speaker 1: actually bundled into other products like GPU chips and service
Speaker 1: to train AI models. That's per wired to have a
Speaker 1: story under the headline Trump's tariffs are threatening the US
Speaker 1: semiconductor revival. Wide also points out that all of the
Speaker 1: machinery and the underlying materials to manufacture semiconductors here in
Speaker 1: the US will become far more expensive with these tariffs
Speaker 1: make it less attractive to manufacture domestically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know this is a little bit heady, but
Speaker 2: needless to say, it is a consumer tech story. You know,
Speaker 2: there are many articles circulating about how these tariffs could
Speaker 2: affect the price of something as ubiquitous as the iPhone.
Speaker 1: Have you been stoking up for your ebase sales.
Speaker 2: Of my iPhone? Oh to sell iPhones? Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 2: not a bad idea. Actually, I hadn't thought about it,
Speaker 2: you know. And just to give a shout out to
Speaker 2: four A form Meta who we love, you know, they
Speaker 2: pointed out that on Apple's own supply chain website. The
Speaker 2: big beautiful bold text that overlays the video of people
Speaker 2: making iPhones in a factory says, designed by Apple in California,
Speaker 2: made by people everywhere. And it's true, you know, as
Speaker 2: a device exemplifies globalization. The materials for the batteries come
Speaker 2: from one country, the display from another. Almost every part
Speaker 2: of the iPhone comes from a different country, and then
Speaker 2: they are predominantly assembled in China. So if things go
Speaker 2: the way they're going and tariffs on Chinese imports remain,
Speaker 2: these phones could get a lot more expensive. And I'm
Speaker 2: going to get the burner phone that I plan on
Speaker 2: getting the summer anyway.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, Yeah, Well this will be another inducement for
Speaker 1: us to get dumb phones, but that that might be
Speaker 1: enough for us on Tarish this week. I feel this
Speaker 1: is probably something going to be coming back to again
Speaker 1: and again. So time for a game.
Speaker 2: I have been sitting on my hands for this entire
Speaker 2: show as we talk about tariffs, to play a game
Speaker 2: with you that came out last week for April Fools.
Speaker 2: I will catch people up a little bit. Last week,
Speaker 2: Tinder launched an in app game called The Game Game.
Speaker 1: The Game Game it sounds a bit like that seventies
Speaker 1: dating show, the dating game with a sprinkle of my
Speaker 1: hero Neil Strauss.
Speaker 2: I think they were definitely going for seventies dating show.
Speaker 2: I don't think they were going for a sprinkle of
Speaker 2: Neil Strauss. But that's your drama. So basically, Open AI's Chat,
Speaker 2: GPT four oh and Tinder partner together to create this
Speaker 2: thing called the Game Game, which allows real Tinder users
Speaker 2: to enter pretend scenarios and talk to AI characters.
Speaker 1: This was a meet cute between chat ChiPT and Tinder,
Speaker 1: good one if you will.
Speaker 2: It was a me cute between altman and Tinder. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: But there's also a competitive part of the game, which
Speaker 2: is that as you talk into your phone, you try
Speaker 2: your best to flirt with the AI, and you get
Speaker 2: points for how suave or empathetic or interesting your responses are.
Speaker 2: And here's how it works. You entered a preferred scenario
Speaker 2: like I'm on a train and my shoes untied and
Speaker 2: a man says, miss, your shoes untied and I say, sir,
Speaker 2: I'm into women. That would be the end of that.
Speaker 2: But no, if I were straight, he would say, mam,
Speaker 2: your shoes untied and I'd look up and it would
Speaker 2: get no. But our producer Tory actually played it and
Speaker 2: she talked to a character named Nathan, who was interested
Speaker 2: in technology and had a Southern accent. But after their
Speaker 2: conversation ended, Tinder told Tory that her replies were charming,
Speaker 2: but that her conversation could have fload a little better
Speaker 2: as she jumped between topics too quickly. Now, as a producer,
Speaker 2: that's a great quality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, short attention span. I think Tory may have
Speaker 1: had it right and the and the app wrong, but
Speaker 1: I would love to hear you try it.
Speaker 2: My phone is ready and Tinder is downloaded. So let's
Speaker 2: the game game. So what happens first is the prompt
Speaker 2: comes up in the game. It's in the Tinder app.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, let's not pass over this soundtrack and
Speaker 1: loving it.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: This is like old New York.
Speaker 2: We're going to Cafe Carlisle for a drink and a smoke. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm done, but let me read you the prompt so
Speaker 2: we can start the game.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: And by the way, it lets you re roll, so
Speaker 2: if you don't like the person you're introduced to, it
Speaker 2: gives you another prompt, which I don't think should happen.
Speaker 2: I think you should happen. But that's how Tinder works,
Speaker 2: That's how chatchy be T four zero works. At a
Speaker 2: bustling dog park, your curious dog eagerly runs up to Penelope,
Speaker 2: a customer service representative, and starts playing with her dog.
Speaker 1: How does your dog know what Penelope's job is? Oh,
Speaker 1: you find that out later.
Speaker 2: Hello, get my dog's like? Whoa, she's in customer service.
Speaker 2: You should chase her down. No, and so my dog
Speaker 2: goes up to Penelope's dog and starts playing with her dog.
Speaker 2: This unexpected encounter creates the perfect excuse to strike up
Speaker 2: a conversation with the one and only Penelope from Customer Service.
Speaker 2: Let's go, I'm not rerolling, I'm taking my first card.
Speaker 3: Well, hey, there looks like your dog's got quite a
Speaker 3: bit of energy, don't they. My pup here is pretty
Speaker 3: friendly too. Seems they're getting along just fine.
Speaker 2: What's their name? My dog's name is Astrid Pastrid.
Speaker 3: Huh, that's a fun name. Seems like an estrid. It's
Speaker 3: a real social butterfly. Does she usually make friends this quick?
Speaker 2: Honestly? No, your dog is the first dog she's ever
Speaker 2: taken any interest in her? Well, ain't that something special?
Speaker 3: Looks like they found the money today.
Speaker 1: Must be a good match.
Speaker 3: Maybe Astrid knows a kindred spirit when she sees one.
Speaker 2: So how often do you come to the park. I've
Speaker 2: tried to go to the dog park more now because
Speaker 2: Astroid's gotten kind of crazy inside, so have I I mean,
Speaker 2: post COVID it's really hard to get outside even now.
Speaker 2: Why I hear you. It's been tough all around.
Speaker 3: The fresh air and space can do wonders for both
Speaker 3: you and Astro. Charleston's got a lot of beauty if
Speaker 3: you take time to notice it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Pela. Sorry, Penelte, I'm so sorry to cut you off.
Speaker 3: No worries at all, I understand it. I don't want
Speaker 3: to chat about the park or just need a friendly here.
Speaker 3: I'm here.
Speaker 2: Take care of yourself and Astrid. Penelope, would you be
Speaker 2: interested in either giving me or getting Did she go away?
Speaker 2: Oh you're still here, Penelope? Sorry, so Penelope, I want
Speaker 2: another go But he just like girl.
Speaker 1: You have no no. I like the way you dropped
Speaker 1: your voice a little bit.
Speaker 2: Wait, do you want to try it? We have to
Speaker 2: have things to do on the show, but that's really
Speaker 2: how it goes. CHATPG is kind of incredible. So guys,
Speaker 2: that is the game game.
Speaker 1: I love the game game. I'm also curious as to
Speaker 1: why both your and Torri's match as a Southern accent is.
Speaker 1: Is this a subtle kind of white loticification of society.
Speaker 2: Where chat GPT four roh is just like, you know what,
Speaker 2: they're getting Southern girls and that's about it, or southern boys.
Speaker 2: In the case of Tory, Nathan was southern. I live
Speaker 2: in New York and one of the things that I
Speaker 2: saw come up and I was talking to Penelope was
Speaker 2: plus plus empathetic. Now, if I was talking to New York,
Speaker 2: I would have been like, yo, girl, what's up. I'm
Speaker 2: talking to Penelope. I'm like, well, girl, would you like
Speaker 2: to meet me at the park again?
Speaker 1: I thought that you're lying about how Astroid had never
Speaker 1: approached any other dogs. Was I mean that was you
Speaker 1: gotta make them feel speak.
Speaker 2: I hope this podcast never comes out. I love that
Speaker 2: more than anything. I will be playing that all day
Speaker 2: and I think I will, by the end of it
Speaker 2: have a Southern accent, just to get a little bit
Speaker 2: more serious about this story. You know, the Washington Post
Speaker 2: reached out to the vice president of Product Growth and
Speaker 2: Revenue at Tinder, and she said that the game is
Speaker 2: meant to be silly and that the company quote leaned
Speaker 2: into the campiness. Apparently, though, She went on to call
Speaker 2: gen Z a socially anxious generation, and while the game
Speaker 2: might be cringe, it's a generation that might look past
Speaker 2: that if it indeed leads to a real connection.
Speaker 1: I had to say, I mean, it was definitely fun
Speaker 1: watching you play. I have never before myself, and I
Speaker 1: didn't just time either, but I've never had a conversation
Speaker 1: directly using my voice with an ali before. Was that
Speaker 1: Was that a first for you or.
Speaker 2: Only when I tried to scam my cousin? Actually?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah?
Speaker 2: So crazy? Is the pressure cooker that that just created
Speaker 2: for me? Felt like there was literally a gun to
Speaker 2: my head that was like flirt.
Speaker 1: That's what it felt like. It's getting hot in here.
Speaker 1: So we're going to take a quick break when we
Speaker 1: come back some more headlines. Now to pivot back to
Speaker 1: the headlines, We've got a few more for today, continuing
Speaker 1: the theme of sex, deaths, and money. Well, no death, thankfully,
Speaker 1: but we've had sex in the form of flirting now
Speaker 1: for money taxes.
Speaker 2: We know it's tax month, and one of the stories
Speaker 2: has to do with two things you never want to
Speaker 2: hear put together, which is IRS and hackathon. And of
Speaker 2: course what does this start with the Department of Government
Speaker 2: Efficiency is planning to stage a hackathon event. I sound
Speaker 2: sad because I am is planning to stage a hackathon
Speaker 2: event with the best engineers at the Internal Revenue Service.
Speaker 2: According to Wired, DOE is planning to host dozens of
Speaker 2: them in DC to build a mega API.
Speaker 1: A mega API, that's actually what I read process.
Speaker 2: It is a MEGAAPI essentially, which would make it easier
Speaker 2: to access taxpayer data across different applications and cloud platforms.
Speaker 1: We don't yet have a lot of details on the hackathon,
Speaker 1: but I do hope they keep it tight because the
Speaker 1: idea of highly sensitive tax data moving freely between what
Speaker 1: maybe third party applications is a little frightening. There is
Speaker 1: a broader controversy roiling the IRS. Several officials, including the
Speaker 1: acting Commissioner, are quitting over the Trump administration's insistence that
Speaker 1: the agency disclosed taxpayer information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Speaker 1: The IRIS has typically kept taxpay information confidential, even from
Speaker 1: other government agencies, and that includes information submitted by undocumented immigrants.
Speaker 1: But in a new agreement which appeared redacted in a
Speaker 1: court filing, ICE officials can now ask the IRS for
Speaker 1: information about people they're investigating or who've been ordered to
Speaker 1: leave the US.
Speaker 2: And in a story that takes us elsewhere into a
Speaker 2: topic I am personally obsessed with, which is right to
Speaker 2: repair laws?
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 2: Right to repair law is basically like laws that say
Speaker 2: that companies have to provide information to people who buy
Speaker 2: things that teach them how to repair it, so one
Speaker 2: you're not just buying new things every time they come out,
Speaker 2: and two that you're able to actually know how to,
Speaker 2: for example, repair a tractor. I was drawn to this
Speaker 2: headline from The Verge with the perfect subhead quote, India's
Speaker 2: repair culture gives new life to dead tech.
Speaker 1: So we had sex, some money, and we do indeed have.
Speaker 2: Oh dead technology, which is about the least sexy thing
Speaker 2: on the planet. There's a rise of Frankenstein laptops in India. Now,
Speaker 2: when I say Frankenstein laptops, what do you think?
Speaker 1: Uh, gosh, I guess I think about laptops assembled from
Speaker 1: all different parts.
Speaker 2: I thought you were gonna say laptops with two bolts
Speaker 2: on the side of that, But yes, they're basically resurrected
Speaker 2: computers made with parts from trash older laptops and other
Speaker 2: e waste ewtes, meaning trash that is of the electronic
Speaker 2: variety at a fraction of the price. These laptops are
Speaker 2: a good option for students, freelancers, or really anyone who
Speaker 2: needs to be a part of India's growing digital economy
Speaker 2: but may not be able to afford to participate otherwise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I read that you can basically get
Speaker 1: a functional laptop from one of these one of these
Speaker 1: Frankenstein laptops for around one hundred US dollars, which is
Speaker 1: like an eighth of the price of any decent new laptop.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty cool story.
Speaker 2: But these Frankenstein tinkers don't have it so easy. There
Speaker 2: are actually many global tech giants who restrict access to
Speaker 2: spare parts or use proprietary hardware, which means people are
Speaker 2: going through piles of sometimes toxic trash to get the parts,
Speaker 2: and India's government is beginning to discuss right to repair
Speaker 2: laws to address this, but progress has been slow.
Speaker 1: Final story for this week is about a question I
Speaker 1: find quite fascinating. What will be the iPhone of ai?
Speaker 1: Will there be a kind of AI product that becomes
Speaker 1: so ubiquitous that we forget what life was like before
Speaker 1: it existed? Well, the iPhone designer himself, Johnny Ive or
Speaker 1: Sir Johnny I've is working on it. Over a year ago,
Speaker 1: he and Sam Altman, the CEO of Open Ai, began
Speaker 1: discussing a device that might bring to life voice enabled
Speaker 1: AI assistance, partly inspired by Altman's well documented fascination with
Speaker 1: the movie Her. So. Alman and I have this startup together,
Speaker 1: Ioproducts that's raised hundreds of millions of dollars and is
Speaker 1: working on some device concepts, including a quote phone without
Speaker 1: a screen, although some sources insist that it's in fact
Speaker 1: not a phone, so the mystery remains. But this into
Speaker 1: a story in the Information, which is also reporting that
Speaker 1: Open Ai executives are considering acquiring a startup Ioproducts. This
Speaker 1: would be a move that could potentially bring the AI
Speaker 1: giant into more direct competition with Apple. It's not clear
Speaker 1: where the negotiation is at the moment, but another of
Speaker 1: these types of XAI X deals perhaps brewing, Although while
Speaker 1: Altman worked close to you with ive on the project.
Speaker 1: Is not clear what his economic stake in it.
Speaker 2: Maybe if the new phone is not a phone. It
Speaker 2: begs the question how the next thing that we cover
Speaker 2: actually is going to happen in a no phone phone universe.
Speaker 1: You're right, and our next segment is all about scammers,
Speaker 1: and specifically scam callers who famously use phones and the
Speaker 1: tech they're using to be more convincing and successful than ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And one of the things that I can't stop
Speaker 2: talking about on the show and talked a lot about
Speaker 2: on Sleepwalkers is how much technological progress and innovation happens
Speaker 2: in the sort of seedier parts of society. And then
Speaker 2: it's after everyone hears these sensational stories about criminal ingenuity
Speaker 2: that the tech is more widely adopted by the general public.
Speaker 2: But it's actually the illicit use that forges the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember, back in twenty nineteen, when we first
Speaker 1: started covering this stuff together, there was a study that
Speaker 1: revealed that more than ninety five percent of all deep
Speaker 1: fake videos on the Internet were non consensual porn.
Speaker 2: Well, I actually didn't even know that three D printing
Speaker 2: was a consumer tech until I heard that blueprints for
Speaker 2: three D printed ghost guns were circulating the internet.
Speaker 1: Together. We actually ran an experiment a few years ago
Speaker 1: to create a deep fake of your voice and scam
Speaker 1: your cousin, and it took us about a week to
Speaker 1: make that clone with the help of a company called
Speaker 1: liar Bird that was subsequently acquired by Descript, the software
Speaker 1: that we use every week to make our podcast. We
Speaker 1: didn't actually get to the scamming apart, but we did
Speaker 1: briefly trick Kara's cousin. That was back in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Since then, the state of the art and the kind
Speaker 1: of social risks haveally advanced. And here to tell us
Speaker 1: more is Julie Jargon, the family and tech columnist at
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal. Julie, welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: So, just to begin, your article tells the story of
Speaker 2: a woman who gets a terrifying call. Can you tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit more about what happened in this exchange?
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely So. There was a woman in Colorado by
Speaker 4: the name of Linda Rohan, and she was just at
Speaker 4: home one night making herself dinner, and her phone rang
Speaker 4: her cell phone and the caller ID showed that the
Speaker 4: call was from a local number, so she thought it
Speaker 4: might be someone she should talk to, so she picked
Speaker 4: it up and immediately heard a voice of a young
Speaker 4: woman that she thought sounded exactly like the youngest of
Speaker 4: her three adult daughters, a panicked, you know message, Mom,
Speaker 4: I'm okay, but something awful has happened and she's sobbing
Speaker 4: and saying she needs help. And that immediately put this
Speaker 4: woman on high alert. And then apparently a man took
Speaker 4: the phone and mentioned the name of her daughter by
Speaker 4: you know by name, and said that she had witnessed
Speaker 4: this drug deal and she screamed and it scared the
Speaker 4: buyers away, and so now he was out all this money,
Speaker 4: and he had pulled this girl into his van and
Speaker 4: now was demanding money.
Speaker 2: We know that this wasn't Linda's real daughter. Where was
Speaker 2: Linda's daughter actually during this.
Speaker 4: She was in her apartment the whole time, safe at home.
Speaker 2: And can you talk a little bit about how this happened.
Speaker 4: I think what happens with these kind of callers is
Speaker 4: they operate on fear and a sense of urgency. And
Speaker 4: this scammer had an elaborate story that he kind of
Speaker 4: kept this woman through this whole time. He told her
Speaker 4: that he needed money in order to free her daughter.
Speaker 4: He told her to go to Walmart and wire money.
Speaker 4: And so she gets in her car and finds the
Speaker 4: nearest Walmart, and he timed how long it took her
Speaker 4: to get there. When she went to the Walmart, he
Speaker 4: wanted to be on speaker the whole time, so he
Speaker 4: had her conceal her phone in her shirt so he
Speaker 4: could hear the conversation. And you know, I think he'd
Speaker 4: made some kind of threats to her and you know,
Speaker 4: her daughter. And when she got to the Walmart, she
Speaker 4: couldn't do the wire transfer because she didn't have a
Speaker 4: debit card. So he told her to go home and
Speaker 4: do it online. And he said, you've got sixteen minutes.
Speaker 4: If you stop anywhere, I'm going to know, because he
Speaker 4: knew how long it had taken her to drive there
Speaker 4: in the first place. And he kept her on the
Speaker 4: phone this whole time, talking to her, trying to keep
Speaker 4: her calm, asking her questions. This whole scenario played out
Speaker 4: for a long time, and she made not one, but
Speaker 4: two money transfers online in order to obtain her daughter's freedom.
Speaker 4: And once it was finally over, she called her daughter
Speaker 4: and found that her daughter was safe in her apartments.
Speaker 1: It was such a striking story because it had this
Speaker 1: kind of cinematic quality. I mean's actually like a movie.
Speaker 1: The guy is playing a version of her daughter's voice,
Speaker 1: making her literally drive from a to b, having her
Speaker 1: conceal a phone in her clothes. I mean, there's fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty thirty forty five minutes, all the while she thinks
Speaker 1: that her daughter has been abducted by a drug dealer.
Speaker 1: I mean, what did that do to the mother? And
Speaker 1: when you were into viewing her and what does she
Speaker 1: reflect about the experience?
Speaker 4: Yeah, she described it as something that she can still
Speaker 4: feel viscerally like. She retold the story to me three
Speaker 4: times over the course of a few different conversations with her,
Speaker 4: as I went through the story again and again with her,
Speaker 4: and I could tell each time I talk to her
Speaker 4: that she felt really nervous and worked up about it,
Speaker 4: even though she knows it was all a scam, even
Speaker 4: though she knows that her daughter was never in any
Speaker 4: actual danger, but this whole ordeal was so terrifying to her.
Speaker 4: And then that's of course why these scammers are so effective,
Speaker 4: that they prey on the fear of people thinking that
Speaker 4: they have a loved one, especially a child who might
Speaker 4: be in some sort of danger. So, even though she's
Speaker 4: now more than a month removed from the situation, still
Speaker 4: in the retelling she feels very like physically nervous and scared.
Speaker 1: Well, she's not surprising because the tension was kind of
Speaker 1: resting up. And then just when she thought that she'd
Speaker 1: made the payment everything was okay, there was a kind
Speaker 1: of not the tone of the screw right right.
Speaker 4: She thought it was kind of over. She'd made one
Speaker 4: transfer of a thousand dollars, and then there was a
Speaker 4: commotion and the man on the phone came back and said, well,
Speaker 4: you know, my boss is angry that it took so
Speaker 4: long to transfer this money, so we need more. My
Speaker 4: boss is mad and he thinks he could sell your
Speaker 4: daughter for thirty thousand dollars. And then at that point
Speaker 4: she hears her daughter in the background screaming like no, no,
Speaker 4: you know, please help me, and this woman Linda wanted
Speaker 4: to talk to her daughter. She pleaded with this man
Speaker 4: to let her talk to her daughter again, and he
Speaker 4: said no, but you know, we can end this now
Speaker 4: if he send another thousand dollars. So then she wired
Speaker 4: another thousand dollars through a different wire service, and at
Speaker 4: that point it was finally over.
Speaker 1: It's this kind of incredible intersection of both a new technology,
Speaker 1: I like the ubiquity of deep fake voices, and a
Speaker 1: tremendously sophisticated psychological hack, right, I mean it has both
Speaker 1: elements exactly.
Speaker 4: And these kind of imposter scams have been going on
Speaker 4: for a long time. I mean years ago, we'd be
Speaker 4: hearing about grandpa parents getting calls from someone that was
Speaker 4: claiming to be their grandson. But they usually didn't have
Speaker 4: a name, they didn't have you know, the voice was
Speaker 4: like just any young man, you know. And so it's
Speaker 4: kind of using the same type of social engineering, but
Speaker 4: ramped up in a more technological way that makes it
Speaker 4: all the more believable.
Speaker 2: When we come back, we'll hear about the way generative
Speaker 2: AI makes imposter scams so convincing. Welcome back, So, Julie,
Speaker 2: I have a lot of friends whose grandparents this has
Speaker 2: happened to, and it preys on this sort of psychology
Speaker 2: of oh my god, my grandchild is in trouble, let
Speaker 2: me help them, without really thinking about how possible it
Speaker 2: is that this is actually going on. This to your point,
Speaker 2: is like an extremely ratcheted up version of this, and
Speaker 2: it begs the question how exactly does something like this work?
Speaker 2: How has it gotten so much more advanced? And I
Speaker 2: think most importantly for this show tech stuff is like,
Speaker 2: how were these people able to replicate Linda's daughter's voice?
Speaker 4: Well, what we don't know here is whether they in
Speaker 4: fact cloned her voice from some publicly available audio, you know,
Speaker 4: whether her daughter had YouTube video out there or some
Speaker 4: other type of audio or video that they could have
Speaker 4: grabbed her voice from. She's twenty six, so chances are
Speaker 4: she she could have. I didn't find any social media
Speaker 4: accounts that I could access for her. But there are
Speaker 4: other ways that you can approximate the sound of someone's voice.
Speaker 4: There are a bunch of apps that are free or
Speaker 4: very inexpensive on the different app stores that allow you
Speaker 4: to change your voice. Fifty year old man could change
Speaker 4: his voice to sound like a twenty year old woman,
Speaker 4: you know, and you can change the dialect to the accent,
Speaker 4: and those can be pretty convincing. And the experts I
Speaker 4: talked to, both psychologists and cybersecurity experts, said that you
Speaker 4: know when you're in this moment of fear, and you've
Speaker 4: already gotten this idea in your mind that your daughter
Speaker 4: is calling you. The first thing they're saying is mom,
Speaker 4: your mind immediately switches to one of your children. And
Speaker 4: so if they're able to approximate a voice of a
Speaker 4: twenty year old woman, then your mind might immediately think
Speaker 4: that that is your daughter, when it may not be
Speaker 4: her actual voice or clone of her voice. So in
Speaker 4: this case, we'll never know how they either got a
Speaker 4: clone of her voice or whether they use some sort
Speaker 4: of generative AI to create a voice that sounded like
Speaker 4: it could be her daughter. And then a couple of
Speaker 4: the tip offs here is that she wasn't able to
Speaker 4: interact with the daughter. There were just these clips of
Speaker 4: sound playing. She didn't have a conversation.
Speaker 2: This is exactly what we did with my cousin and
Speaker 2: what she had said to me that was so interesting
Speaker 2: about this is the thing that tricked her was not
Speaker 2: that I had this like incredible deep fake, but it
Speaker 2: was the context. So she didn't really question the fact
Speaker 2: that it was me, not because it really sounded like me,
Speaker 2: but because of the context of our conversation. She called
Speaker 2: me and I picked up, So why shouldn't she think
Speaker 2: it's me right exactly.
Speaker 1: So what is the scale of this problem?
Speaker 4: It's really huge. The Federal Trade Commission said that the
Speaker 4: number one category of fraud last year was imposter scams.
Speaker 4: So that doesn't mean that they're all AI generated, but
Speaker 4: scams in which people are calling, texting, emailing, whatever, impersonating
Speaker 4: someone that someone knows with some sort of story and
Speaker 4: a request for money.
Speaker 2: This is something that is incredibly advanced for people who
Speaker 2: we'd often call petty criminals. Does that mean that the
Speaker 2: technology has become so ubiquitous that it's very accessible by
Speaker 2: people we would call petty criminals. It's no longer the
Speaker 2: thing of like, oh, I'm going to get on the
Speaker 2: subway and pickpocket someone for the amount of money that
Speaker 2: you might be able to get for this kind of scam.
Speaker 2: So I mean not that I think you have a
Speaker 2: criminal mind, Julie, but I'm wondering, from your perspective as
Speaker 2: someone who's now reported on this, is this the kind
Speaker 2: of crime that people who are looking to scam people
Speaker 2: are engaging it? Is it because it's so easy?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it has become a lot easier because of the
Speaker 4: abiquity of these tools that can do voice clones or
Speaker 4: AA generated voice approximations of people. All you have to
Speaker 4: do is google it and you'll find dozens of online
Speaker 4: tools that are either free or very very inexpensive. Or
Speaker 4: go on the app store and download a voice changing app.
Speaker 4: Though it's widely accessible, it's inexpensive, and all it takes
Speaker 4: is one person who sends two thousand dollars and however
Speaker 4: long this scenario went on, maybe thirty forty five minutes
Speaker 4: or whatever, you know, they got two thousand dollars. So
Speaker 4: you get a few victims over the course of some
Speaker 4: period of time, and the payout can be pretty sizable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think. I mean there's a financial cost to
Speaker 1: your point about you know, the aftermath for Linda. There's
Speaker 1: also this tremendous emotional costs, I mean, the trauma of it.
Speaker 1: I saw a documentary the other day produced by Bloomberg
Speaker 1: about young teens who are basically the victims of sextortion scam.
Speaker 1: So somebody pretends to be somebody in their community and
Speaker 1: gets them to send nude photos and maybe they're looking
Speaker 1: to get I think hundreds of dollars, but in some
Speaker 1: cases this pushes the teams to suicide and so it's
Speaker 1: not like, yes, you have a sense of violation if
Speaker 1: you get pick pocket on the subway, but this goes
Speaker 1: to your core of your deepest fears, and I guess
Speaker 1: maybe that's one of the reasons why your story went
Speaker 1: so viral. But what can we do and what can
Speaker 1: listeners do? What can readers do? What is the way
Speaker 1: to make ourselves a bit more robust in the face
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 4: Well, I do have a column coming out this weekend
Speaker 4: that will have tips, so I don't want to pre
Speaker 4: empt to that, but there are things you can do, So.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned, read all about it. Yeah, yeah, real about.
Speaker 4: It when it comes out. But yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 4: think just awareness, for one, is a major thing. And
Speaker 4: I think that's why so many people responded to this,
Speaker 4: Because you'd talk to anybody and someone knows someone to
Speaker 4: whom this has happened or something you know very similar,
Speaker 4: and that shows the scale of the problem. And I
Speaker 4: think what's unfortunate is that people who are victimized by
Speaker 4: these scams feel an incredible sense of shame and embarrassment
Speaker 4: about it. You know, after their mind has calmed down,
Speaker 4: they can easily go back and see the red flags
Speaker 4: and they can you know, even when Linda was experiencing
Speaker 4: this from the beginning, it cossed her mind this could
Speaker 4: be a scam, but she felt like the stakes were
Speaker 4: too high to just hang up and call her daughter
Speaker 4: at that point, because she thought, you know, there was
Speaker 4: that one kernel of like what if, what if my
Speaker 4: daughter really has witnessed the drug deal and is in
Speaker 4: the back of this person's van, and now her life
Speaker 4: is in my hands.
Speaker 2: And you don't want to be the mother that avoided
Speaker 2: this because you think that you're being sort of techno savvy, right,
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, yeah, And that's when it
Speaker 2: really speaks to the sort of core emotional piece of
Speaker 2: these kind of scams. To Oz's point, it's not just pickpocketing.
Speaker 2: You know, pickpocketing, you can say, oh, I should have
Speaker 2: closed up my jacket better, But this is something that
Speaker 2: is just so much more complicated than that. And also
Speaker 2: I think has dual use. I just wanted to bring
Speaker 2: that up quickly, like a lot of these technologies are
Speaker 2: not just created for bad right, so it's not something
Speaker 2: that can just be kind of wiped out. Deep fake
Speaker 2: technology also has some really interesting applications that I think
Speaker 2: we all benefit from. Now, so it becomes that sort
Speaker 2: of complicated intersection of like some people are using this
Speaker 2: to take advantage of people and scam them, and other
Speaker 2: people are using it to make some really interesting practical applications.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, I'm curious to see your column,
Speaker 2: but it's definitely less simple than just get rid of
Speaker 2: this technology.
Speaker 4: Well, it's not going away, that's for sure. There are
Speaker 4: obviously good uses of generative AI and it's definitely here
Speaker 4: to stay. And my worry is as it gets better
Speaker 4: and better, especially with video, I just wonder at some
Speaker 4: point will people be able to receive faith time calls,
Speaker 4: right video calls where they feel like they're seeing interacting
Speaker 4: with someone who looks just like their child. Now, how
Speaker 4: do you then tell that that's not real?
Speaker 1: Julie, Thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Julie. We'll look forward to that column this Saturday.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week for TEXTA.
Speaker 1: I'm Kara Price and I'm mos Vloschen. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Eliza Dennis, Victoria Dominguez, and Adriana Tapia. It
Speaker 1: was executive produced by me, Kara Price and Kate Osborne
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and Katria Novelfi Hot Podcasts. The engineer is Bihit
Speaker 1: Fraser and Kyle Murdoll makes this episode and he also
Speaker 1: wrote our theme song.
Speaker 2: Join us next Wednesday for Textuff the Story, when we
Speaker 2: will share an in depth conversation with Jenstatsky, creator and
Speaker 2: writer of the hit HBO Max show hacks Well, chat
Speaker 2: about if AI is coming for her job and what
Speaker 2: it's like to make TV. Knowing you're likely battling for
Speaker 2: attention with a.
Speaker 1: Second, please rate, review, and reach out to us at
Speaker 1: tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We love hearing
Speaker 1: from you