One such story happened in Canada. Ruth Card, 73, heard her granddaughter’s voice on the phone and said she was detained by the police and needed bail money. She immediately went to the bank, she.

What happened

The couple withdrew C$3,000 from one bank and went to the other for a larger sum. There, an alert manager stopped them and warned that another customer had received a similar call that sounded like a loved one’s voice – but it turned out to be fake.

Not everyone is that lucky. Benjamin Perkin, 39, told The Washington Post how his elderly parents were defrauded of thousands of dollars using artificial intelligence.

• They received a call from a lawyer claiming that their son had killed an American diplomat in a car accident and needed money for legal costs.
• Then it was alleged that the so-called lawyer gave the phone to Perkin and the voice sounded just like his real voice.
• This convinced them. When the lawyer later called and asked for $21,000 Canadian, the parents went to the bank and sent the money.

Voice cloning scams have been a threat for several years. But the rapid spread of powerful and easy-to-use AI means that the potential for abuse of this technology has easily outstripped public backlash.

Just two years ago, or even a year ago, cloning a human voice required a lot of recording. Now if you have a Facebook page or are recording a TikTok and your voice is there for 30 seconds, people can clone your voice,
– says Hani Farid, professor of criminology at the University of California at Berkeley.

Currently, the police have no way of dealing with this problem. Voice cloning services are very inexpensive and evolve over time. Therefore, the problem will only deepen.