The potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) ranges from transformative technology to the doom of humanity. We’re not going to weigh in on that debate. Instead, we’ll look at an immediate AI threat: it makes it harder to detect when you are being scammed.

Artificial intelligence has supercharged the speed, volume, and sophistication of consumer frauds. It has given scammers a powerful new set of tools, making it harder to know who and what you can trust.

The red flags we used to watch for—hard-to-understand accents and emails with lots of typos—are no longer enough. The old Nigerian prince scam is passé.

Old Scams, New Technology

AI technology can impersonate people to a shockingly real extent, create convincing messages and images, conduct realistic conversations, and tailor fraud attempts at individual victims.

The result is not necessarily a new generation of scams. Rather, AI is making many old scams more convincing, more personalized, and much easier to carry out.

One of the most unsettling applications of AI is voice cloning. The “grandparent scam” is hardly new. A caller says he is your grandson, daughter, or another relative and has been arrested, injured, or stranded somewhere. They urgently need money.

What has changed is that the caller now sounds remarkably like the person they are impersonating.

The FTC warns that a scammer may need only a short audio sample, often obtained from something posted online, to create a convincing clone of someone’s voice.

How to Protect Yourself from Voice Cloning

The traditional defense is to look for clues: That doesn’t sound like my son. That’s not how my daughter talks. The voice sounds strange.

But those defenses become less useful when the voice is nearly perfect.

The solution may seem counterintuitive: don’t necessarily trust what you hear.

Instead, hang up and call the person back using a telephone number already stored in your contacts. Don’t use a number supplied by the caller. Families can also establish a secret word or phrase that can be used to verify an emergency. The FBI specifically recommends this precaution.

Don’t trust your lying ears!

AI Makes Email Scams Harder to Spot

For years, consumers were told to beware of emails containing misspellings, awkward grammar, and strange wording.

AI is eliminating many of those clues.

A scammer can now ask an AI system to write a polished email that appears to come from a bank, business executive, government agency, or friend. The message can be rewritten to sound authoritative, friendly, or urgent.

AI can also produce photos and videos that appear to show real people saying or doing things they never did.

A celebrity may appear to recommend an investment. A financial expert may appear to promise extraordinary returns. A government official may appear to make an announcement. A friend or relative may appear in a video asking for money.

The FBI says criminals are using fake social-media profiles, voice clones, identification documents, and believable videos to support fraud schemes.

Don’t trust your lying eyes!

How AI Makes Scams More Personal

A scammer who knows that you recently moved, have a grandchild in college, or own a particular type of car can incorporate those details into a pitch. Information that consumers casually post on social media can become ammunition.

Romance fraud is another area where AI can give criminals a substantial advantage.

Instead of manually maintaining conversations with multiple victims, scammers can use AI to generate messages and responses. They can create convincing photos of nonexistent people, construct elaborate biographies, and keep conversations going for long periods.

The problem is that AI is attacking some of the ways humans traditionally establish trust.

We trust a familiar voice. We recognize someone’s face. We believe professionally written communications. We assume that a photograph or video constitutes evidence.

AI can now counterfeit all those signals.

A 2026 AARP survey found that 64% of adults said they were confident in their ability to recognize AI-generated fraud, a sense of confidence that researchers warned could increase their vulnerability.

The lesson is that authenticity can no longer be established simply by how something looks or sounds.

So, if we can no longer rely on what we see or hear, we need to rethink how we determine what’s real.

New Rules for Protecting Yourself

Experts say the best thing you can do is to slow down.

Urgency is one of a scammer’s most powerful weapons. If someone tells you, “Your account will be closed in 10 minutes” or “You have to send the money right now,” that’s precisely when you should stop.

If your bank supposedly calls, hang up and call the number on your bank card. If a government agency contacts you, find its official telephone number independently. If a relative calls with an emergency, call the relative back.

And don’t trust caller ID. Telephone numbers can be spoofed, and AI-generated voices can make the person on the other end sound authentic.

Also, don’t click first and investigate later. Don’t click links in unexpected texts or emails. Open the company’s legitimate website or app yourself. The FBI specifically recommends independently verifying suspicious messages before clicking links or downloading attachments.

More Red Flags to Watch For

Be especially suspicious of requests for unusual payment methods. Gift cards, cryptocurrency, wire transfers, and other difficult-to-reverse payments should set off alarms when someone unexpectedly demands them.

Other suggestions:

• Be skeptical. Instead of trusting right away, use caution.
• Limit what you make public, such as photographs, videos, and voice recordings that can potentially help criminals impersonate you or someone you know.
• Use multifactor authentication. Even if a scammer obtains a password, an additional authentication factor can make account takeover considerably harder.
• Don’t provide sensitive personal information—such as your Social Security number, bank account number, or two-factor authentication code—to unsolicited callers.
• Be cautious about clicking online ads. When in doubt, type the seller’s website directly into your browser.

Don’t be embarrassed to stop and ask someone else. Scammers depend on isolation. They want victims to believe that asking a spouse, child, friend, or bank employee will somehow make the situation worse. In reality, a second pair of eyes can break the spell. If you’re ever unsure about a suspicious financial request, your EKS advisor can be another trusted resource.

AI doesn’t make scammers smarter. It makes their scams more believable.

That distinction matters. Consumers don’t need to become experts at detecting deepfakes or learn how AI-generated voices work.

Instead, follow two simple rules: Trust, but verify independently. And use an old-school adage: if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.