Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) are calling on two federal agencies to crack down on the growing threat posed by AI voice scams.
In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission Friday, the lawmakers requested that the committees respond to four questions by Nov. 17. The questions include what steps they were taking to educate the American people about such crimes and to prevent them, what they had learned so far about the artificial intelligence-based voice fraud, what resources were being used to fight them, and whether more legislation was necessary to combat the fraud.
Their requests come as swindlers increasingly use speech synthesis technology to mimic a person’s voice and defraud that person’s family members or friends.
“These scams prey on our best instincts to help our loved ones in need, cause great distress, and raise security concerns,” the senators wrote.
Scammers only need a short recording of someone’s voice to create a convincing fake, Yahoo Finance has previously reported. They can pull samples of someone’s voice either from their social media accounts or by giving someone a phone call and recording them. Once they've successfully imitated someone's voice, these scammers will often pretend to be a loved one in urgent need of cash.
In their letter, the senators cited an example of an Ohio couple that received a phone call from someone who sounded like their son. In a panic, the man on the phone said he was in jail and needed $7,000 for bail. Fortunately, the couple was able to contact their real son, who was safe at home, before wiring any money. But the senators warned this is just the beginning.
“These scams are putting too many parents and grandparents through this emotional toll, and as technology improves, voice clones will only become more convincing,” they wrote.
The senators have been at the forefront of this issue.
Last week, Sen. Klobuchar appeared at a Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband hearing titled “Protecting Americans from Robocalls.” There, she questioned witnesses on the ways AI voice fraudsters are swindling Americans.
Both senators last year also passed the Seniors Fraud Prevention Act, which instructs the FTC to educate seniors and improve the office’s response to complaints about fraud.
“More can be done to educate Americans about these frauds and to help prevent them from happening,” the senators wrote. “Towards that end, we look forward to partnering with your agencies to prevent exploitative scams that use voice cloning technology.”
Dylan Croll is a Yahoo Finance reporter.
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