Until recently, imitating a particular person convincingly was difficult. A voice could be approximated by a skilled mimic; a face could not really be borrowed at all. Both of those facts have changed.

It is now possible to produce a close imitation of a specific person's voice from a modest amount of recorded speech, and increasingly to do the same with their image. The material required is not unusual. For anyone of public standing it is often already available: a recorded talk, an interview, footage from an event, a published photograph.

The significance is a shift in what a person's exposure consists of. It used to be that exposure meant information about a person, the record of who and where they were. It now also includes the raw material with which a person can be imitated. A voice and a likeness, once they exist in public, are not only descriptions of someone. They are the ingredients for impersonating them.

This is already being used. The pattern is consistent and well documented: an imitated voice or image is used to lend authority to a request, often a financial one, that the real person never made. The imitation does not have to be perfect. It only has to be good enough, in the moment, to be believed by someone who has no reason to doubt it.

The point is not alarm, and it is certainly not an argument for a person to withdraw from public life. It is that the calculation has changed. The recordings and images of a person are now a category of exposure in their own right, and they deserve the same considered attention as any other.

Knowing what exists, where it sits, and how it might be used is the first step. The second is ensuring that the people and institutions around a person understand, plainly, that a convincing request is not the same thing as a genuine one.