OpenAI CEO Sam Altman cautioned the financial sector about a looming “major fraud threat,” driven by AI systems capable of mimicking human voices to get around security measures and authorize fund transfers. Altman made these remarks during a Federal Reserve event held on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
“A thing that terrifies me is apparently there are still some financial institutions that will accept the voiceprint as authentication,” Altman said. “That is a crazy thing to still be doing. AI has fully defeated that.”
While speaking on a panel led by Michelle Bowman, the Federal Reserve’s Vice Chair for Supervision, Altman expressed serious concern over the fact that certain financial institutions still rely on digital voice identification to authorize large financial transactions. He highlighted this as one of his top worries.
He emphasized his concerns about fraudulent authentication methods, stating “some bad actor is going to release it – this is not a super difficult thing to do. This is coming very, very soon.”
The use of voice recognition as a verification method:
The use of voice recognition as a verification method for high-net-worth banking clients gained traction over ten years ago. However, with the rise of AI-generated voice clones—and soon, even video replicas—Altman warned that these technologies can now mimic individuals so convincingly that they are becoming “virtually impossible to distinguish from real people,” signaling an urgent need for more advanced and secure authentication techniques.
AI may lead to the complete elimination of certain job sectors:
Altman has cautioned that artificial intelligence (AI) may lead to the complete elimination of certain job sectors. During his appearance at the Capital Framework for Large Banks conference, organized by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, he singled out customer service positions as being particularly vulnerable to automation.
The founder of OpenAI stated that the shift in the customer service industry is essentially finished, telling Michelle Bowman, the Federal Reserve’s Vice Chair for Supervision: “Now you call one of these things and AI answers. It’s like a super-smart, capable person. There’s no phone tree, there’s no transfers. It can do everything that any customer support agent at that company could do. It does not make mistakes. It’s very quick. You call once, the thing just happens, it’s done.”
