AI ‘voice clone’ scams increasingly hitting elderly Americans, senators warn

Senators on the Senate Special Committee on Aging are asking the FTC to police AI systems that are already being used to scam elderly Americans through the use of voice clones.

The letter to FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan warned that voice clones and chatbots are allowing scammers to trick the elderly into making them believe they are talking to a relative or close friend, which leaves them vulnerable to theft. Pete Kasperowicz is a politics editor at Fox News Digital.

"In one case, a scammer used this approach to convince an older couple that the scammer was their grandson in desperate need of money to make bail, and the couple almost lost $9,400 before a bank official alerted them to the potential fraud," the Senate letter said. "Similarly, in Arizona, a scammer posing as a kidnapper used voice-cloning technology to duplicate the sounds of a mother’s crying daughter and demand ransom."