AI ‘voice cloning’ scams are on the rise. Here’s how to protect yourself

A California mom says she was scammed out of thousands of dollars this month after receiving a call that sounded like her daughter in distress. She now suspects it was an artificial intelligence-generated hoax. She’s one of many who have been targeted by so-called “voice cloning” scams as AI tools allow anyone to create a convincing replica of someone’s voice with only a few seconds of real audio. Americans lost more than $893 million to AI-related scams last year, including voice cloning attacks along with AI-generated phishing emails, romance scams and other hoaxes, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Scammers can mimic anyone from family members and friends to coworkers or professional services workers. Banks including the United Kingdom’s Starling and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia have warned customers to watch out for voice cloning scams. Experts say AI voice replicas have gotten so realistic that most people can no longer reliably distinguish them from real human voices. “For the everyday person, it is just not fair to expect them to be able to spot this stuff,” said Henry Ajder, an expert on AI-generated media who consults for governments and companies. “I struggle with it. Most people do.” How do AI voice scams work? Scammers can create an AI replica of someone’s voice using a short recording of their speech — often pulled from social media or an earlier scam call that was surreptitiously recorded. Social media can also provide a trove of information about family members and close friends who could be targeted. Fraudsters will typically make it sound like the loved one they’re mimicking is in distress, purportedly having been kidnapped or in jail. Then they’ll urgently demand money in exchange for their loved one’s release. “There was no time to think,” Gary Schildhorn, a Philadelphia attorney who was targeted by an AI voice scam mimicking his son, told CNN last year. “It was all, ‘I have to react to help my son. He’s in trouble.’” In some cases, the AI voice may be more than just a single recording. Sophisticated attackers could use text-to-speech tools or “voice skinning,” which manipulate a scammer’s voice so they sound like the person they’re imitating in real time. Those techniques facilitate back-and-forth conversations between the target and the AI clone voice, potentially making the scam more convincing, Ajder said. Hackers can also make it appear as if a call is coming from a known number through a tactic known as caller ID spoofing — so you can’t necessarily trust that a call that appears to be coming from your mom is indeed her. How to avoid falling victim to AI voice scams Strange pauses or vocal fluctuations were previously considered red flags that a caller’s voice might be AI-generated. But those signals may no longer be present now that AI has advanced. Instead of trying to determine whether a voice is authentic, look for other general scam warning signs, Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley and chief science officer at GetReal Security, told CNN last year. Is the person on the other end giving a deadline or introducing a sense of urgency? Are they encouraging you not to tell anyone else what’s happening? Are they asking you to move large sums of money in unusual ways? Those are the types of questions experts say to keep in mind. Targets who receive these types of calls should try contacting their loved one through other means, such as via a text message, calling them on another person’s phone or reaching out to someone who would know where they are. Deborah Del Mastro, the California mom recently targeted, told ABC7 News that she called her daughter only after sending money to the scammers. Her daughter answered right away and was at work. Families or coworkers can also establish a precautionary “code word” that can be used to verify each other’s identity. It should be a word or phrase that only a small group of people know and isn’t discoverable online. “Ultimately, if you suspect that something might not be right, it is much better to have your mum or your brother or your friend laugh at you for thinking that they’re a robot,” Ajder said, “than it is to potentially be running to an ATM.” By Clare Duffy

Nobel Prize-Winner Demis Hassabis Says AI Job Cuts Are Dumb. Research Agrees

Across America, graduating college students are booing commencement speakers who mention AI, and communities are battling data centers. A backlash against AI is clearly underway. It’s not hard to see why. With their talk of a jobs apocalypse and general creepiness, plenty of AI CEOs these days don’t seem to realize they often sound like Hollywood supervillains. But there is one notable exception — Demis Hassabis. If you’re not already familiar with him, Hassabis is the head of Google-owned DeepMind. That seems like a position with supervillain potential. But he also won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work using AI to solve one of biology’s most vexing problems — predicting the shapes of proteins — and then releasing the solution to the world’s scientists for free. Rather than using AI to replace workers, cheat on everything, or flood the world with slop, Hassabis enthuses about its potential to help cure disease and engineer energy abundance. He’s soft-spoken and bespectacled rather than square-jawed and cape bedecked, and he positions himself as AI’s science-minded good guy. His latest public stance is likely to add to this reputation. As Wired recently reported, he called the recent mania for AI-fueled job cuts basically just dumb. Why AI-driven layoffs are dumb Speaking at Google’s I/O event, Hassabis explained that DeepMind doesn’t look at AI as a way to eliminate jobs and cut costs. Instead, he sees the technology as a way to help businesses dream bigger and do more. “Perhaps there is an ulterior motive for putting those messages out; raising money or whatever,” Hassabis said of other firms slashing headcount supposedly because of AI. “From my point of view, from DeepMind and Google’s point of view, if engineers are becoming three or four times more productive, then we just [want to] do three or four times more stuff.” Sure, companies can use potential productivity gains of AI to trim headcount and pad profits for the benefit of investors. But there’s no shortage of other ways they could deploy the resources freed up by handing many tasks over to the bots. “I have a million ideas, from lab drug discovery to game design,” Hassabis continued. “I’d love to have some free engineers to go and do those kinds of things.” Companies trimming tech talent may be suffering from “a lack of imagination—and a lack of understanding of what’s really going to happen,” he believes. Research shows that layoffs usually backfire Is Hassabis right that companies chasing a short-term boost through AI job cuts may come to regret the decision? We’ll all have to wait for a definitive answer to that question. But there are good reasons to think he might have a point. First, research shows that layoffs in general are often a stupid idea. Of course, they save money. Sometimes they’re genuinely unavoidable (though that mostly doesn’t apply to the mostly super profitable firms doing them now). But multiple studies show that a short-term bump in performance is usually followed by a longer-term decline. Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer summed up the research this way: “Layoffs often do not cut costs. … Layoffs often do not increase stock prices, in part because layoffs can signal that a company is having difficulty. Layoffs do not increase productivity. Layoffs do not solve what is often the underlying problem, which is often an ineffective strategy, a loss of market share, or too little revenue. Layoffs are basically a bad decision.” That’s not even taking into account the human cost to workers. Other research has found that being laid off increases a person’s risk of suicide by two and a half times and increases mortality by 15 to 20 percent over the following 20 years. So why do layoffs? As Hassabis suggests, some firms may be peakcocking for Wall Street. Others may genuinely need to free up funds for a strategic shift. But mostly, Pfeffer insists, “layoffs are the result of imitative behavior. These companies … are doing it because other companies are doing it.” An AI-specific reason layoffs are dumb That’s the general case against layoffs, and it’s pretty strong. But there is another argument against AI-driven layoffs specifically. On the MIT Sloan Management Review website, consultant and author Andrew Winston points out that when firms use AI as an excuse to trim headcount, they also diminish their pipeline of talent. They may save a few dollars. They may also find themselves short of skills and talent when they need them in the future. You can ignore this problem, but it might come back to bite you. As the case of climate change proves, asking CEOs to forego a quick performance bump for longevity and resilience later may be borderline hopeless. Winston continues to point out this inconvenient truth about AI anyway. “I’m asking companies to accept potential (short-term) competitive disadvantages on the basis of uncertain future benefits and collective responsibility. That’s a hard sell,” he acknowledges. “But I have a sneaking suspicion that we will look back at early 2026 and kind of wish we had just stopped.” Don’t get caught up in AI layoff FOMO All of which is a warning to other bosses looking on at tech company layoffs with FOMO. When some of the biggest names in business are all slashing jobs, you might feel like you’re missing a trick if you don’t follow suit. But both Nobel-winner Demis Hassabis and a whole bunch of research suggest leaders should take a breath and really consider whether they want to get swept up in AI job-cut mania. Cutting costs has obvious benefits for your bottom line. But what profit-making possibilities will you not pursue because of those job losses? How will the departure of their colleagues affect the state of mind and productivity of those left behind? Will you likely regret the move later when you find your team is burned out and your bench of experienced talent is incredibly thin? Before you cut jobs, take a minute and consider whether Hassabis is right. Doing more things because of AI could be a smarter choice than employing fewer people. EXPERT OPINION BY JESSICA STILLMAN, CONTRIBUTOR, @ENTRYLEVELREBEL

AI May Replace 80 Percent of Skills. This Last 20 Percent Will Make You Irreplaceable

I work in front of a screen. And I’ve been thinking about how AI will change my work. What does it even mean for my future? It’s completely normal to wonder about this. Most people are convinced artificial intelligence is a threat to their careers. But what they are forgetting is the human value they bring to their work. Aaron Levie, CEO of the enterprise cloud company Box, recently pointed out that when people watch AI at work, they are most likely seeing it take over the first 80 percent of a task—the heavy lifting of repetitive processing. The last 20 percent is where you come in. Your domain expertise, judgment, and relationships. That is what makes you irreplaceable. AI can finally give you the space to add human value at work. “The extra 20 percent, it turns out, is all the value creation of that profession. All the expertise and domain knowledge is in that last 20 percent, not the text that got generated,” Levie said in an interview with Casey Newton of Platformer, the online publication about tech and democracy. I couldn’t agree more. Your judgment is valuable Take the work of a lawyer. Junior associates spend most of their week reading precedents, looking for case connections, and summarizing legal statements. That’s the 80 percent of the work. The long, tedious, trainable, reproducible task. No client hires a lawyer just for that. They expect them to make a better and more persuasive case for them to win. To convince the judge. To save the dying deal. The 20 percent only you can do. The practical human value. AI work feels like completion, but it’s not. Not even close. It’s good at execution, but the meaning and context are all up to you. The career anxiety you feel about AI is normal, but it may be misdirected. When people say “AI is taking my job,” they usually mean it’s taking their tasks. Writing code, analyzing long documents, and doing the research. The first pass. And yes, super-intelligent machines are coming for those. If you built your professional identity entirely by executing tasks, that’s hard reckoning. The good news is, your knowledge from doing and experience is still relevant. All of that makes your judgment valuable. AI cannot replicate that. Domain expertise under pressure must count for something. A cybersecurity engineer knows exactly what steps to take when an attack is live. Making that call in real time with incomplete information changes their approach. Data doesn’t always give a clear answer. You have to decide anyway. Who bears that decision? Not the AI. It can notice the patterns. But it’s the engineer who must come up with a specific solution to solve the problem. Most companies are limited by execution capacity. They can’t pursue every good idea because they don’t have the people to execute them all. When AI takes care of the execution, the constraint becomes the quality of the ideas. The clarity of human judgment. And the client relationships they can’t afford to lose. If you still want to hold onto the 80 percent, you’re running in the wrong direction. You can’t compete with AI on speed. Focus on honing your quality of judgment. The value and usefulness only a human perspective can fill. Your clients don’t buy your services just for the deliverables; they buy the peace of mind too. And they also like to work with people with a better reputation. Trust is not a digital asset. In the future of work, the world will reward the 20 percent more. The calculator case When calculators became universal, they didn’t make mathematicians obsolete. They just took over repetitive math, which freed mathematicians to spend more time on quality and better mathematical thinking. The profession evolved upward. The entry-level work disappeared. The high-level work expanded. AI is doing the same thing to knowledge work. At scale. Only it’s happening everywhere, in every field, all at once. Build the kind of expertise that requires better judgment. And relationship capital that compounds over time. Develop your specific point of view at work. What AI can’t do is replace your original perspective earned through engagement with practical problems over time. Your distinct angle on your field, built from specific experience, failures, and observations is what matters. It’s the experience that makes your presence valuable in the room. The threat from AI is understandable. The pace of change is insane. Some jobs and skills are becoming less valuable. Don’t stay terrified. Fear takes away your ability to think clearly. It makes us hold onto the routine tasks we feel safe doing. But routine tasks are exactly what the machines want. If you’ve been doing meaningful work for any serious amount of time, you’ve accumulated things AI cannot access. AI is taking the parts of your job you probably didn’t love that much anyway. Even that requires your input. If you feed AI the wrong ideas, it will give you a brilliant, highly optimized wrong answer. The rarest skill right now is the ability to diagnose the actual problem before rushing to fix it. You are still needed for work that requires your specific experience. Don’t underestimate what you’ve already built. You have what it takes to survive AI. By Thomas Oppong FAST COMPANY

Apple’s Siri Update Could Include a Major AI Privacy Twist

More rumors about Siri’s big makeover are leaking ahead of Apple’s annual developer conference—and one big change could have a lot to do with data privacy and security. Apple is expected to launch a standalone app for its embattled AI assistant, Siri, which will operate as a chatbot-like interface, similar to Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Users are expected to be able to type or speak requests. Although the app will be able to store conversations to mine for contextual information for future requests, Apple is expected to differentiate itself from its competitors by allowing users to auto-delete their conversations, according to a report from Bloomberg. This is much like the way Apple allows users to auto-delete their text messages, which works so well, Bloomberg notes, that it has invited complaints over government officials using the feature to delete their messaging histories. Apple also plans to establish stricter guidelines around what information does hang around in the system and how long it can be kept. Competitors typically allow users to toggle on temporary incognito modes that prevent conversations from being used to train AI models. It’s worth noting that Apple has brought in Google’s Gemini and cloud infrastructure to keep the Siri update functioning and on schedule—after costly delays. Apple first introduced its Apple Intelligence as a mix of on-device and cloud-based computing that it billed as similar to iPhone security but in the cloud. Called Private Cloud Compute, it was expected to operate on Apple’s own servers and chips. Bloomberg reports that Apple will still call its system “Private Cloud Compute,” but the mechanics of how it might operate aren’t clear, given the Google integration. The two-year delay around the roll out of an updated Siri has proved to be a stain on Apple’s recent track record, as well as an expense, because of a recent $250 million settlement on a class-action suit that alleged false advertising. But if Apple is successful in relaunching Siri with an emphasis on privacy, it could justify to consumers the longer wait time, especially as concerns gather about what people are sacrificing in the name of cutting-edge AI features. Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference will kick off on June 8. The tech giant is expected to announce iOS 27, as well as software for Mac computers and iPads. And the graphic for the conference, featuring glowing lettering, hints at a new look and functionality for Siri. BY CHLOE AIELLO @CHLOBO_ILO