India, Sept. 15 -- AI voice cloning is turning familiar voices into a dangerous new weapon for everyday fraud

The phone call sounded completely genuine. The caller sounded exactly like Ajoy, an acquaintance of a 67-year-old man in Kolkata.

There was an emergency, he was told. A relative had been admitted to a private hospital and urgently needed money.

The man believed the familiar voice. Within less than an hour, he transferred Rs 95,990.

Then he contacted the real Ajoy. He had never made the call.

The Kolkata incident, reported in August, is a warning about a new kind of fraud that is likely to become harder to detect: AI voice cloning. A scammer no longer needs to sound like a stranger. With a convincing copy of a familiar voice, ...