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If a call sounds like your boss (asking for bank account numbers) or your family member (begging for help in an emergency), you’re more likely to act. That’s why scammers use voice cloning to make their requests for money or information more believable. And the FTC is fighting back.

When the FTC announced its Voice Cloning Challenge last year, the main goal was to encourage innovative ways to help protect people from AI-enabled voice cloning harms. Today, we’re pleased to announce that that the FTC awarded four top prizes to the winning submissions that take a wide range of approaches to doing just that:

  • a solution that would use algorithms to detect whether voice patterns are human or synthetic
  • a technology that would detect in real time voice cloning and deep fakes in incoming phone calls or digital audio in two-second chunks, assigning a “liveness score”
  • a proposal that would watermark audio with distortions that people would not be able to hear, but that could throw off AI voice cloners so that the audio could not be accurately cloned
  • a technology that would authenticate that a voice is human and embed the authentication as a type of watermark

Learn more about the winning proposals on the Voice Cloning Challenge page.

The Voice Cloning Challenge is a part of the FTC’s ongoing work to ensure voice cloning technology isn’t used by scammers to cause harm. That work includes prevention of harms where possible, a proposed comprehensive ban on impersonation fraud, and applying the Telemarketing Sales Rule to AI-enabled scam calls. It also includes warning consumers about the use of AI in scams — like when a scammer clones a family member’s voice, calls pretending to be in trouble, and then asks you to send money right away.

If you get a call like this, call the person who supposedly contacted you using a phone number you know is theirs, and verify the story. If you can’t reach your loved one, try to get in touch with them through another family member or their friends.

If you spot a scam, report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

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The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.

  • We won’t post off-topic comments, repeated identical comments, or comments that include sales pitches or promotions.
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  • We won’t post threats, defamatory statements, or suggestions or encouragement of illegal activity.
  • We won’t post comments that include personal information, like Social Security numbers, account numbers, home addresses, and email addresses. To file a detailed report about a scam, go to ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

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Brenda Smith
April 09, 2024

we need to stop all AI, voice, face, and scammers all at once, for the entire world and we as a country should be able to do so! Hire all the hackers, if need be!

Nancy Mccormick
April 09, 2024

Voice cloning is dangerous for everyone. Please make it a felony to perpetuate this crime.

azire
April 09, 2024

And the FTC will make all of these technologies free to consumers?

Jiavanna Kinsel
April 10, 2024

FTC let's implement that Cell phone manufacturers actually have an internal report system as well. With active cell phone partnerships may be best to document information directly as something suspicious occurs.

The "report suspicious interaction" button should be where the end call button is on the phone and or within that specified interaction. This may start the process to an FTC investigation that is time stamped and then sent a transactional email to further the documentation. Something such as "report suspicious call button" may ask also ask a series of preliminary questions that better documents the interaction while information is freshest in mind.

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