The threat of the AI voice deepfake has become mainstream with one in four Americans having received such a call in the last year. Perhaps more worrying 24 percent aren’t sure they could tell the difference, suggesting nearly half the population has either encountered AI voice fraud or couldn’t distinguish it from a real call.
Voice solutions company Hiya surveyed over 12,000 consumers across the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, and Spain, and finds that the rise of deepfakes isn’t just a nuisance, it is driving demands for strict regulation and financial liability for mobile network operators.
This surge in sophisticated fraud has eroded faith in the mobile ecosystem. When asked who is winning the fight between carriers and scammers, Americans chose scammers by nearly two-to-one. 38 percent of mobile subscribers say they are likely to switch providers if they feel unprotected from AI scams.
Older users (55+) are being hit hardest according to the study, losing an average of $1,298 to phone scams, that’s triple the losses of younger adults.
Alex Algard, CEO and founder of Hiya, says, “When consumers tell us that scammers are beating mobile networks two-to-one, that has to be a wake-up call for the entire telecom industry. Scammers are weaponizing AI to clone voices and steal from vulnerable people, and the bad guys are simply moving faster than legacy network defenses. We cannot expect everyday people to outsmart artificial intelligence on their own. We are in an arms race where scammers are using AI as a weapon, which means operators have to use AI as a shield. The only path forward is embedding state-of-the-art AI directly into the telecom infrastructure to strictly authenticate callers before the phone ever rings.”
There’s clear demand for steps to address the issue, 72 percent of consumers support stronger government regulations to force carrier action. 67 percent of Americans believe carriers should bear some responsibility for scam losses originating on their networks and 55 percent agree carriers should offer zero-liability fraud protection comparable to credit card companies. Outside the US, over 75 percent of consumers want some level of carrier financial liability.
You can get the full report from the Hiya site.
Image credit: Parin Kiratiatthakun/Dreamstime.com
