McAfee Corp. announced its AI-powered Deepfake Audio Detection technology, known as Project Mockingbird, at the Consumer Electronics Show. This new, proprietary technology was developed 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.

Anticipating the ever-growing challenge consumers face in distinguishing real from digitally manipulated content, McAfee Labs, the innovation and threat intelligence arm at McAfee, has developed an industry-leading advanced AI model trained to detect AI-generated audio. 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. With a 90% accuracy rate currently, McAfee can detect and protect against AI content that has been created for malicious ?cheapfakes?

or deepfakes, providing unmatched protection capabilities to consumers. McAfee is building on its rich history of AI innovation, the first public demos of Project Mockingbird, McAfee?s Deepfake Audio Detection technology, will be available onsite at the Consumer Electronics Show 2024. The unveiling of this new AI technology is also further evidence of McAfee?s focus on developing a comprehensive portfolio of AI models that are cross platform and serve multiple uses cases to safeguard consumers?

digital lives. Mockingbirds are a group of birds primarily known for mimicking or ?mocking? the songs of other birds.

While there?s no proven reason as to why Mockingbirds mock, one theory behind the behavior is that female birds may prefer males who sing more songs, so the males mock to trick them. Similarly, cybercriminals leverage Generative AI to ?mock? or clone the voices of celebrities, influencers and even loved ones in order to defraud consumers.

Consumers are increasingly concerned about the sophisticated nature of these scams, as they no longer trust that their senses and experiences are enough to determine whether what they?re seeing or hearing is real or fake.