Generative AI has already lowered the bar for cybercriminals looking to clone someone’s voice and use it in their schemes.

Why it matters: Cybercriminals now need as little as three seconds of someone’s voice to successfully clone it and make it usable in a scam call thanks to generative AI tools, researchers at McAfee have found.

People are already losing money from these incidents: In a recent McAfee survey, 77% of victims in AI-enabled scam calls said they lost money. More than a third of those victims lost more than $1,000.


The big picture: Scam phone calls have often taken the form of mass robocalls pretending to be a health care provider, the Internal Revenue Service or even a provider looking to extend someone’s auto warranty...