The Evolution of Scams 4.0: AI and the Spanish Church Alert

The 4.0 scam has evolved thanks to Artificial Intelligence, which allows for perfect reproduction of voices and even videos. The Spanish Church has had to take measures by issuing a warning to nuns, priests, and prelates to be extremely cautious of communications from (non-existent) bishops leaving messages asking for money. "Hello, I am the bishop and the diocese needs help." Naturally, it is all false, but there are those who, despite being cautious, have fallen for this fraud. For now, the phenomenon seems to be confined to the Spanish-speaking world, as reported by various newspapers (El Diario, El Pais), but it is not excluded that this ingenious method could spread elsewhere. Using a version similar to the phone trick of the fake grandchild asking for help, in Spain, scammers do not pretend to be close relatives of the abbess or the parish priest, but well-known bishops, vicar generals, ecclesiastical personalities. Faced with requests made with the voice reproduced by AI, several monasteries have fallen into the trap to the point of having already affected about ten dioceses. For this reason, the Episcopal Conference has issued a warning explaining the dynamics of the new scam and asking everyone for the utmost caution. "The dioceses do not ask for money - or at least they are not doing it in this way." A few weeks ago, the use of artificial intelligence cloned the voice and image of Mexican Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes to advertise a diabetes drug that the cardinal described as miraculous. A perfect video. Obviously, it was a fraud that forced Retes to clarify that he was not in the video and especially that he had never been sick with diabetes. It's the so-called deep-fake video in which the protagonist acted as a testimonial to a wondrous cure capable of definitively healing diabetics. The computer-generated voice explained that the disease had disappeared thanks to the drug. The deceptive announcement was so realistic that it shocked the cardinal himself. In this case too, the Mexican archdiocese denounced on X writing: Attention! Do not fall into the trap.