Enlarge / Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos Inc., center, arrives at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Bryan, Texas, US, on Tuesday, May 30, 2023. Holmes surrendered to authorities on Tuesday to begin her 11 1/4-year sentence after she was convicted by a jury last year of defrauding investors in the blood-testing startup. Photographer: Sergio Flores/Bloomberg via Getty Images (credit: Getty | Bloomberg )

Disgraced biotech entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes has arrived at a federal prison in Texas to begin her 11-year, three-month sentence for defrauding investors of her defunct blood-testing start-up, Theranos.

Press and photographers stationed outside the women's prison camp in Bryan, Texas, captured what appeared to be Holmes exiting a gray SUV with New York state plates and making her way into the facility flanked by facility staff at around 12:30 pm local time. Shortly afterward, the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed to the Associated Press that Holmes was indeed in custody at the facility, FPC Bryan, which is about 100 miles northwest of Houston, Texas.

(credit: YouTube | Sky News )

The facility houses about 655 female inmates who are required to work in the cafeteria or a manufacturing facility, with pay starting at $1.15 per hour, according to The New York Times . Like other inmates, Holmes will don prison-issued khaki pants and shirts in pastel green, gray, or white during her stay. She will have no Internet access but can buy a radio or an MP3 player from the prison commissary and listen to "non-explicit" music. When she's not working or listening to prison-approved music, she can partake in leisure activities such as "table games" and arts and crafts.

Enlarge (credit: ArtemisDiana | iStock / Getty Images Plus )

AI models designed to closely simulate a person’s voice are making it easier for bad actors to mimic loved ones and scam vulnerable people out of thousands of dollars, The Washington Post reported .

Quickly evolving in sophistication, some AI voice-generating software requires just a few sentences of audio to convincingly produce speech that conveys the sound and emotional tone of a speaker’s voice , while other options need as little as three seconds . For those targeted—which is often the elderly, the Post reported—it can be increasingly difficult to detect when a voice is inauthentic, even when the emergency circumstances described by scammers seem implausible.

Tech advancements seemingly make it easier to prey on people’s worst fears and spook victims who told the Post they felt “visceral horror” hearing what sounded like direct pleas from friends or family members in dire need of help. One couple sent $15,000 through a bitcoin terminal to a scammer after believing they had spoken to their son. The AI-generated voice told them that he needed legal fees after being involved in a car accident that killed a US diplomat.

Enlarge / Elizabeth Holmes, founder and former CEO of Theranos, arrives for motion hearing on Monday, November 4, 2019, at the US District Court House in San Jose, California. (credit: Getty | Yichuan Cao )

Nearly a decade ago, Theranos touted a revolutionary diagnostic device that could run myriad medical tests without having to draw blood through a needle. Today, the startup’s founder, Elizabeth Holmes, goes to court, where she’s facing 12 criminal counts for statements she made to investors and consumers about her company’s technology.

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 after dropping out of Stanford University at the age of 19. Driven by her phobia of needles, Holmes wanted to create diagnostic tests that use blood from finger pricks rather than from needles. The idea caught on, attracting well-connected board members like Henry Kissinger and James Mattis, drawing over $400 million in investments from wealthy investors including Larry Ellison and Rupert Murdoch, and securing lucrative partnerships with Walgreens and Safeway. At its peak, Theranos was worth over $9 billion.

But Theranos’ myth started unwinding in 2015 when a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that the company had been performing most of its tests on traditional blood diagnostic machines rather than its own “Einstein” device. The company’s own employees doubted the machine’s accuracy.

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