AI tools already have the ability to distort people’s voices and create deepfake (media data synthesis technology where one person’s face is replaced with another) photos and videos. Soon artificial intelligence could be used to imitate handwriting.

Researchers from the Mohammed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in Abu Dhabi (UAE) claim that artificial intelligence has learned to convincingly imitate the handwriting of a particular person. Scientists said they are already concerned about the problems this technology causes fraudsters, so they plan to create tools to combat fraud and significantly increase public awareness of new AI functions.

Despite the concerns, the researchers said they plan to use the new tool in real-world applications in the coming months.

The technology created by the scientists uses a transformer model (a type of neural network designed to learn the context and meaning of sequential data) and can convincingly mimic English handwritten text.