McAfee’s latest Project Mockingbird is a groundbreaking innovation in the digital world, where deepfake, identity theft, and sophisticated cyber scams are becoming more prevalent and sophisticated.
Announced at CES 2024, this AI-powered Deepfake Audio Detection technology aims to help defend consumers against the surging threat of cybercriminals utilizing fabricated, AI-generated audio to carry out scams that rob people of money and personal information, enable cyberbullying, and manipulate the public image of prominent figures.
It’s concerning how cybercriminals can use Generative AI tools to create scams that are incredibly convincing. For instance, they could use voice cloning to impersonate someone in distress and ask for money. Other scams might involve manipulating authentic videos by changing the audio to make it seem like someone said something different. It’s getting harder for consumers to tell real content from digitally manipulated content.
To address this ever-growing challenge consumers face, McAfee Labs has developed an advanced AI model trained to detect AI-generated audio with 90% accuracy. McAfee’s Project Mockingbird technology uses a combination of AI-powered contextual, behavioral, and categorical detection models to identify whether the audio in a video is likely AI-generated. This provides protection capabilities to consumers against “cheapfakes” or deepfakes created for malicious purposes.
“With McAfee’s latest AI detection capabilities, we will provide customers a tool that operates at more than 90% accuracy to help people understand their digital world and assess the likelihood of content being different than it seems,” said Steve Grobman, Chief Technology Officer, McAfee. “So, much like a weather forecast indicating a 70% chance of rain helps you plan your day, our technology equips you with insights to make educated decisions about whether content is what it appears to be.”
McAfee’s December 2023 Deepfakes Survey revealed that the vast majority (84%) of Americans are concerned about how deepfakes will be used in 2024, with 68% expressing heightened concerns compared to the previous year.
Also, over a third of Americans said they have seen or experienced a deepfake scam; this is most prominent for 18–34-year-olds at 40%. Worries loom over their influence on elections, undermine public trust in the media, and be used to impersonate public figures.
McAfee has been able to use AI to protect millions of customers from online privacy and identity threats for over a decade. They have a unique approach of running multiple models in parallel to perform a comprehensive analysis of problems from different angles. This way, they can provide the most effective information and recommendations to their customers and reinforce their commitment to protecting people’s privacy, identity, and personal information.
