Moscow police warn about AI voice impersonation in fraud calls

Fraudsters may record people during phone calls and use artificial intelligence to imitate their speech when contacting relatives, Moscow police official Anton Kononenko warned on October 14. He spoke at a press conference on cyberfraud.

Kononenko described a scheme in which a caller uses a familiar-sounding voice to tell parents that their child has been in an accident or another emergency. The apparent identity is part of the deception.

He said short recordings could be sufficient, mentioning three seconds of speech or six phrases. That was his assessment of the risk, rather than a universal guarantee of successful voice cloning from any recording.

The head of Moscow’s cybercrime unit also said criminals could alter recorded video for later fraud attempts. The warning concerns impersonation using captured speech and images, rather than proof that the person whose voice is heard actually made the call.