Coming to a Phone Near You: AI-Generated Attacks on Gun Owners

Someday soon you will receive a video call, or perhaps a text or voice mail video from a local politician well known to you. They may be a sheriff or chief of police, or even a state official. This person will begrudgingly tell you there was a bad vote in the statehouse, and something you use daily and value highly is now illegal and must be destroyed. It may be a standard-capacity magazine or a brace or a specific type of weapon or ammunition. As a result, thousands of the items will likely be eliminated. 

You’re smiling right now. After all, you would never do something like that, right? The truth is you’re not the target. The artificial intelligence message was not meant for you, someone who values their constitutional rights enough to stay informed by visiting websites like this. The false AI message was meant for those who are far less informed and it will do exactly what its creators intended. 

In fact, it’s happening right now. 

Last week, the State Department sent every U.S. Embassy a warning that a recent video of Secretary of State Marco Rubio was a sham. The fake messages were sent via text, voicemail and Signal to a group that included governors, U.S. Senators and even foreign ministers. 

“The State Department is aware of this incident and is currently monitoring and addressing the matter,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told the media. “The department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously take steps to improve the department’s cybersecurity posture to prevent future incidents.”

Rubio was the second senior member of the Trump Administration who was used in an AI deception. In May, someone targeted Susie Wiles, the President’s chief of staff. 

The FBI is tracking the illegal AI campaigns, which it calls “smishing and vishing.” 

According to an FBI Public Service Announcement issued May 15: 

Smishing is the malicious targeting of individuals using Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Message Service (MMS) text messaging. Vishing, which may incorporate AI-generated voices, is the malicious targeting of individuals using voice memos. Both smishing and vishing use tactics similar to spear phishing, which uses email to target specific individuals or groups.

For gun owners, vishing could be the biggest threat. “For vishing, malicious actors are more frequently exploiting AI-generated audio to impersonate well-known, public figures or personal relations to increase the believability of their schemes,” the FBI said in their PSA. 

Spotting these fake messages isn’t too difficult, at least for now, but every day the messages become better as AI improves. 

The FBI recommends you don’t respond to any AI message. Instead, they suggest trying to identify a real phone number for the source and calling them to verify the authenticity of the message. 

Thankfully, at least for right now, AI-generated videos still aren’t quite there. The FBI offered guidance to spot these fakes. 

• Look for subtle imperfections in images and videos, such as distorted hands or feet, unrealistic facial features, indistinct or irregular faces, unrealistic accessories such as glasses or jewelry, inaccurate shadows, watermarks, voice call lag time, voice matching, and unnatural movements.
• Listen closely to the tone and word choice to distinguish between a legitimate phone call or voice message from a known contact and AI-generated voice cloning, as they can sound nearly identical.

Nowadays, most smishing and vishing attempts are done to create some type of financial fraud (AKA theft) for the creators. However, as AI improves, the technology will undoubtedly be used to support the creators’ personal and political beliefs. Historically, as technology has improved, gun owners have become frequent victims. 

It’s difficult to predict how the new technology will be misused, but it will definitely be used to attack our Second Amendment. 

 

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This story is part of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and is published here with their permission.