Thieves stole over $240,000 by using voice-mimicking software to trick a company’s employee. The thieves used an AI voice deepfake of a company executive to get the employee to wire money to an offsite account in what researchers say is the first publicly reported AI heist.

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If you haven’t heard by now, AI technology like deepfakes are able to accurately mimic or copy the likeness and sound of real people. This is what happened to one company’s managing director who received a call from someone he believed was his superior. The superior’s voice told the employee to wire the money to a Hungarian bank account to avoid “late-payment fines.”According to the company’s insurer Euler Hermes, who detailed the events of the heist to The Washington Post, the AI-altered voice “was able to imitate the voice, and not only the voice: the tonality, the punctuation, the German accent,” of the company superior. The heist was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.Although the company employee who spoke with the fake AI-voice said the request was “rather strange,” the accuracy of the voice was apparently so similar that the manager felt they had to do what it told them to.AI voice imitation software is currently one of the projects pursued by several AI start-ups. Google is working on the technology along with several smaller companies like Lyrebird. These companies say that AI-generated voice software can make automated robot calls more lifelike, and even help mute people speak again.However, others believe that AI technology that can mimic the voice and likeness of real people can lead to potentially more crimes like this reported heist. Social media services are already working to prevent AI-powered deepfakes from tricking users into believing false information online.These crimes haven’t deterred startups like Lyrebird who said in a company ethics statement that it will develop this technology responsibly. Others are content with using deepfakes to create amusing YouTube videos , or apparently steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies.

Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. You can reach him on Twitter