HSBC's fake fraudster - AI hit or miss?

Digital fraud and banking scams can be hugely distressing for the victims and are obviously a pest to banks themselves. According to Merchant Savvy, payment fraud tripled between 2011 and 2020, and is set to quadruple by 2027, amounting to losses of more than US$40 billion. It's increasingly hard for members of the public to discern what is and isn't a scam, when and when not to respond to what appears to be a bona fide contact from your bank.This campaign puts a face to a fraudster, using artificial intelligence (AI) to transfer voice data to facial features. "Voice recordings of actual fraudsters were read into a ‘voice to face’ neural network to generate face composites that predict facial features based on the speaker’s unique ‘audible DNA’", explain the creators of the ad. "The predicted faces of the fraudsters informed the creation of various digital humans using Epic Game’s Unreal engine creation platform ‘Metahumans’. These digital ‘fraudsters’ were then brought to life using motion capture. Which is all very interesting, and is intended to "educate the public" for prevention purposes, but does it actually help potential victims? Some see it as simply adding another layer of complexity to an already complex landscape - after all, this 'face' of fraud is itself a kind of fraud, it's not real. High street branches are shutting and there are fewer and fewer ways to get a person-to-person response from a skilled/informed human bank employee. Others will be horrified by the runaway pace of AI in all aspects of our lives, with ethics lagging far behind. No doubt others still will simply admire the virtuosity of the technology. What are your thoughts on the 'fake face of fraud'? Brilliant piece of awareness-building, or just another chunk of anxiety incitement?

Keywords: HSBC Faces of Fraudsters, bankin fraud, digital scams, banking scams, payment fraud, artificial intelligence, AI and bank scams, voice to face neural network,Wunderman Thompson