10/14/2026
A mother in California picked up the phone and heard her daughter's voice, panicked, saying she'd been kidnapped and needed money immediately.
What she'd heard wasn't her daughter. It was an AI-generated clone of her voice.
In a 2025 study, scientists found that when people heard a cloned voice, they correctly identified the voice as AI-generated only about 60 percent of the time.
The FBI attributed more than $890 million in 2025 losses to AI-enabled fraud, and voice cloning is one of the main drivers behind that number.
It is not only older adults being targeted. Younger family members get these calls too, often framed as a sibling or friend in trouble. Older adults just tend to lose the most per incident.
Two ways to protect your family.
๐ Agree on a private code word or question with the people a scammer is most likely to impersonate (kids, parents, spouse)
๐ If a call like this comes in and you have not set up a code word yet, hang up, then call the real person back
When in doubt, slow down and verify.