Researchers in the US have reportedly used OpenAI’s voice API to create AI-powered phone scam agents that could be used to drain victims’ crypto wallets and bank accounts.

As reported by The Register, computer scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) used OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, in tandem with a number of other freely available tools, to build the agent they say “can indeed autonomously execute the actions necessary for various phone-based scams.”

According to UIUC assistant professor Daniel Kang, phone scams that involve perpetrators pretending to be from a business or government organization target around 18 million Americans every year and cost somewhere in the region of $40 billion.

GPT-4o allows users to send it text or audio and have it respond in kind. What’s more, according to Kang, it’s not costly to do, which breaks down a major a barrier to entry for scammers looking to steal personal information such as bank details or social security numbers.

Indeed, according to the paper co-authored by Kang, the average cost of a successful scam is just $0.75.

Read more: Hong Kong busts crypto scam that used AI deepfakes to create ‘superior women’

During the course of their research, the team carried out a number of different experiments, including crypto transfers, gift card scams, and the theft of user credentials. The average overall success rate of the different scams was 36% with most failures due to AI transcription errors.

“Our agent design is not complicated,” said Kang. “We implemented it in just 1,051 lines of code, with most of the code dedicated to handling real-time voice API.

“This simplicity aligns with prior work showing the ease of creating dual-use AI agents for tasks like cybersecurity attacks.”

He added, “Voice scams already cause billions in damage and we need comprehensive solutions to reduce the impact of such scams. This includes at the phone provider level (e.g., authenticated phone calls), the AI provider level (e.g., OpenAI), and at the policy/regulatory level.”

The Register reports that OpenAI’s detection systems did indeed alert it to UICU’s experiments and moved to reassure users that it “uses multiple layers of safety protections to mitigate the risk of API abuse.”

It also warned, “It is against our usage policies⁠ to repurpose or distribute output from our services to spam, mislead, or otherwise harm others — and we actively monitor for potential abuse.”

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OpenAI announced that it has hired the co-founder of Facebook’s failed Libra crypto project on the same day that tech giant Apple revealed new integration between ChatGPT and its Siri artificial intelligence.

The San Francisco-based firm announced on Monday that former Facebook Libra exec Kevin Weil will become its new chief product officer. Sarah Friar, the former chief financial officer of Square, will also join OpenAI as chief financial officer.   

The tech firm said that Weil “will lead a product team focused on applying our research to products and services that benefit consumers, developers, and businesses.” 

Facebook launched the Libra project in 2019 as an open-source digital currency. It then rebranded to Diem in December 2020 as the firm reportedly sought to distance itself from the social media platform and woo US regulators. 

Regulators were concerned that the stablecoin project could be used for money laundering and worried about its impact on monetary stability. They also raised concerns that stablecoin-specific regulation wouldn’t be ready before Facebook released Diem to its billions of users.

The project ultimately failed to gain regulatory approval and Facebook shuttered Diem in January 2022, selling $200 million worth of assets to Silvergate Bank. 

Read more: Hong Kong bans WorldCoin, but for how long?

Apple also announced its new partnership with OpenAI on Monday. The deal will see OpenAI lend its ChatGPT artificial intelligence to Apple where it will be incorporated into the firm’s Siri assistant.

OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman said on X (formerly Twitter) that he was “Very happy to be partnering with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into their devices later this year! think you will really like it.”

Sam Altmans’s crypto-focused identity project Worldcoin has also hired a new executive with a crypto past. Coinbases’s former head of corporate communications, Elliott Suthers, was announced yesterday and will be joining Worldcoin as its head of comms for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

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Sam Altman, the co-founder and former CEO of OpenAI, was fired by the board in a surprise move on Friday. Over the weekend, attempts to oust the board and reinstate himself were dashed — leaving Microsoft in a unique position to snatch up his tech talent.

On Friday, it was announced that Altman had apparently lost the confidence of OpenAI’s board for “not consistently candid” communications. Without warning, it fired the 38-year-old and appointed interim CEO Mira Murati.

“We are grateful for Sam’s many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI. At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward,” the OpenAI announcement read.

Following the news, Altman described the turn of events as “sorta like reading your own eulogy while you’re still alive.”

According to multiple anonymous sources, the board and Altman disagreed on AI safety, the speed at which to rollout new tech, and the commercialization of the company. However, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap dismissed the rumors.

“We can say definitively that the board’s decision was not made in response to malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices. This was a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board,” Lightcap said in a staff memo.

OpenAI board withstands mass pushback to firing Sam Altman

The board’s coup was apparently led by co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. But threats of a mass employee walkout and pressure from investors forced him and the board to reconsider their decision — along with immediate resignations by senior researchers and co-founder and president Greg Brockman.

Over the weekend, Altman was spotted visiting OpenAI’s offices to negotiate the terms of his return. He and Brockman demanded that all board members hand in their resignations and reinstate the co-founders.

The all-or-nothing proposition came with time to mull it over. But a Saturday 5pm deadline was missed; then another on Sunday.

By Sunday evening, the OpenAI board told employees they were here to stay — and Altman wasn’t coming back. As first reported by The Information, board members told staff a change-up in management was a necessary evil; the “only path” to “broadly beneficial” artificial general intelligence.

Read more: Alleged Worldcoin whistleblower steps forward, says they’re aiding authorities

What’s more, interim CEO Mira Murati would be immediately replaced with Twitch co-founder and former CEO Emmett Shear. “Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of OpenAI,” Shear posted on X (formerly Twitter).

“After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted.”

The former Twitch CEO also added that the board’s decision to cut Altman wasn’t about safety disagreements. “Their reasoning was completely different from that,” he said. “I’m not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercialising our awesome models.”

Microsoft smells blood in water, pounces

Meanwhile, OpenAI’s major investor Microsoft has made the most of the situation. CEO Satya Nadella announced late Sunday night that Altman, Brockman, and other prominent OpenAI members were joining Microsoft to form a new advanced AI research team.

“The mission continues,” Altman responded on X, confirming the news.

Other talent Microsoft managed to poach include Jakub Pachoki, former director of research, OpenAI’s former research scientist Szymon Sidor, and its former head of preparedness Aleksander Madry.

Read more: Opinion: Americans shouldn’t offer their eyeballs to WorldCoin

In his announcement post, Nadella added that Microsoft was still “committed” to its work with OpenAI. The tech giant is rumoured to have invested $10 billion into the startup, and together the firms are developing the Maia AI chip. Similarly, OpenAI’s new CEO Shear said that its partnership with Microsoft “remained strong.”

It’s rumoured, however, that the board’s decision to cut Altman was in part due to his recent work on a project called ‘Tigris.’ According to Bloomberg, the custom AI Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chip would rival Nvidia and had already attracted considerable interest from VCs in the Middle East along with Microsoft.

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The Twitter account of artificial intelligence firm OpenAI’s chief technical officer was hacked on Friday to share a scam promotion of a fraudulent OpenAI cryptocurrency airdrop.

Mira Murati’s tweets informed users of an ERC-20 token airdrop “driven by artificial-intelligence based language models.” The token’s name was OPENAI.

A malicious link took users to a page that copied the likeness of another crypto and AI project called ChainGPT. The main difference between the two is the link offering users to connect their crypto wallet.  

Read more: Crypto braces for impact of OpenAI’s new GPT-4

As reported by Cointelegraph, a security researcher from the blockchain security firm Beosin told the publisher that the Twitter scam uses a crypto wallet draining kit that “lures visitors into signing requests.”

They added, “Once the request is signed, the attacker will transfer NFTs and ERC-20 tokens out of the victim’s wallet.”

Murati’s verified Twitter account has 126,200 followers. The post was reportedly up for just an hour and was viewed 79,600 times. It received 83 retweets before it was deleted. 

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