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As artificial intelligence rapidly evolves to make financial scams hyper-realistic, cybersecurity experts warn that the best defense isn’t sophisticated detection software — it’s good old-fashioned human skepticism.
While adversarial states like China and Russia leverage AI on a global scale, average Americans are most frequently targeted by cybercriminals looking to exploit personal vulnerabilities for a quick payout, according to cybersecurity expert Morgan Wright.
“Let’s go back to around 1860, when Edgar Allan Poe wrote: ‘Believe nothing that you hear and only one half that you see,’” Wright told Fox News Digital. “That advice is as good now as it was 160 years ago.”
AI VOICE SCAMS CAN CLONE YOUR FAMILY’S VOICE
Cybercriminals are using artificial intelligence to refine their scams, targeting everyday Americans with voice cloning and high-tech that removes language barriers to make it easy to swindle unsuspecting people, experts say. (Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)
AI technology has allowed bad actors to automate and scale personalized fraud schemes against everyday citizens. Generative tools eliminate language barriers, draft convincing phishing texts, and generate hyper-realistic voice and video clones.
By capturing just a few seconds of audio — often scraped from social media — fraudsters can convincingly replicate the voice of a family member. Wright pointed to the case of Deborah Del Mastro, a California mother who lost thousands of dollars after scammers used AI to clone her daughter’s voice to stage a terrifying kidnapping hoax.
THE FAMILY GROUP CHAT IS A GOLDMINE FOR SCAMMERS
“It’s my daughter’s voice,” Del Mastro recalled during an interview on The CyberGuy Report podcast. “And she’s having a panic attack.”
Convinced her daughter was in immediate danger, Del Mastro transferred more than $5,000 to the scammers before realizing she had been swindled.
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“When you can fool a mother, that’s how good these things are getting,” Wright said of the voice-cloning technology. “What they do is use manipulation, influence, and deceit. The more urgent I can make it sound, the more you’re going to lower your guard and take action.”
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An illustration created on June 9, 2023, shows a smartphone recording in front of a voice cloning screen in Los Angeles. Experts say artificial intelligence’s biggest peril is its ability to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, handing cybercriminals a cheap and effective technology to exploit. In a new breed of scams that has rattled U.S. authorities, fraudsters are using strikingly convincing AI voice cloning tools — widely and cheaply available online — to steal from people by impersonating family members. (Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images)
Wright, who has trained federal, state, and local law enforcement in behavioral analysis, interviewing, and interrogation — including teams at the FBI and the National Security Agency — emphasized that every scam relies on basic psychological triggers.
His primary advice for anyone on the receiving end of a suspicious call or message is to pause before reacting.
“We’re not storming the beaches at Normandy; you’re not going to get arrested,” Wright said. “No law enforcement agency sends you an unsolicited text saying you’re about to get arrested.”
While AI platforms roll out updated security features, scammers continuously find ways around them, making software-based detection a constant moving target.
The OpenAI logo is displayed on a smartphone screen on a reflective surface with Dots promotional artwork projected onto it in Creteil, France, on Oct. 1, 2026, as OpenAI begins rolling out Dots in ChatGPT, its new system of autonomous AI agents. (Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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“We hear about all the different models from xAI, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini—they change models constantly,” Wright said. “So when the model changes, how effective is [detection software]? We don’t know, because this stuff is moving so fast. What you see today will be drastically different tomorrow.”