Incident 523: Australian Journalist Able to Access Centrelink Account Using AI Audio of Own Voice

Description: A Guardian journalist was able to verify their identity and gain access to their own Centrelink self-service account using AI-generated audio of their own voice along with their customer reference number, shortly after voiceprint was deployed for ID verification.

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Alleged: Centrelink developed an AI system deployed by Australian Taxation Office and Services Australia, which harmed Centrelink account holders.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
523
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2023-03-15
Editors
Khoa Lam
AI can fool voice recognition used to verify identity by Centrelink and Australian tax office
theguardian.com · 2023

A voice identification system used by the Australian government for millions of people has a serious security flaw, a Guardian Australia investigation has found.

Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) both give people the optio…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.