Yahoo Boys are latching on to Artificial Intelligence and deepfakes like magnets to metal, and it’s poised to reshape and improve their scam techniques dramatically.
How do we know this? Because it’s all over social media, telegram, and even YouTube.
In the last month, a YouTube channel called Yahoo Boii released over ten instructional videos on using AI and various voice cloning techniques, all for “educational purposes only,” of course.
His YouTube channel appears linked to, or perhaps he runs it himself, a popular Telegram channel called Format Boy (Official Community for Upcoming Billionaires).
The channel, of course, is loaded with typical Yahoo Boy treats, like methods and formats, software for deepfakes, inspirational advice on how to get rich, and lots of demos of how they scam old people in the US.
Some Things I Learned About Yahoo Boys And AI
Browsing through the channel, five things become very clear about how Yahoo Boys (and probably scammers) have vastly improved their use of deepfakes.
#1 – Demos Show Deepfakes Are No Longer Just Simple Face Swaps
I first noticed that the demos showing AI deepfake calls with victims have improved in the last year and no longer appear to use iPhone apps like xPressionCamera. They are now using high-powered AI tools like Roop and Deep Live Cam to carry out the deepfakes.
Click play to watch this demo. The deepfake scammer is on the right-hand side.
And here is another deepfake demo between a scammer and another elderly lady. The victim keeps popping off and on camera because her signal is bad.
You can see how this AI could fool someone. Click to play the video.
And the demos don’t just cover deepfake calls. There are also pre-recorded messages that are sent to victims that look and sound just like the real thing.
In this demo, Format Boi uses a clip taken off of social media and clones the image and voice to send pre-recorded messages to his victims. Click to play the video.
In this final demo video, the Yahoo Boy surprises the victim with the line, “I love your smile,” when she answers the call. She didn’t realize it would be a video call and she has just awoken.
You can see in this call, how realistic it all looks. There is little doubt, she probably felt the scammer was very much a real person.
#2 – They Are Using Deepfake Software And Voice Changers
As proof that Yahoo Boys are moving far past simple face swap Apps, there are many tutorials provided on how to use more powerful deepfake software, including how to buy powerful laptops that contain enough GPU’s to run the intensive software required for a realistic deepfake.
In this tutorial, he provides an in-depth explanation of his top three deepfake tools and how to change your voice so that the accent is more appropriate to the images that they are using.
In this video, he compares Roop and Deepcam live. There are so many choices for Yahoo Boys these days on software to scam victims.
#3 – They Are Using Deepfakes Across All Communication Channels
Deepfakes will only work for scamming if they can be used on the platforms that the victims are familiar with. Yahoo Boii provides detailed instructions on how to carry off deepfake calls on Facebook, Whats App, Instagram and Google Meet.
Taking Romance Scams To A Whole New Level
Romance scams are already bad enough. Annual losses in 2019 were estimated at $493 Billion a year. By 2023, romance scams had soared to over $1.3 Billion and climbing.
These new techniques will supercharge romance scams and make them that much harder for the average person to detect. We’ll need to educate Americans that you can’t always trust what you see or hear.