AI Deepfake Scams Are Draining the Remittances Latino Families Send Home — Here's How to Fight Back

This illustration image created on June 9, 2023, shows a smartphone recording in front of a voice cloning screen in Los Angeles. The biggest peril of Artificial Intelligence, experts say, is its ability to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, handing cybercriminals a cheap and effective technology to exploit. In a new breed of scams that has rattled US authorities, fraudsters are using strikingly convincing AI voice cloning tools -- widely and cheaply available online -- to steal from people by impersonating family members. (Credit: by Chris Delmas / AFP) (Photo by CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images)

A wave of artificial-intelligence-powered fraud is spreading through Latin America's financial system, and it now sits directly in the path of money that households in Doral, Houston, Queens, East Los Angeles and Chicago's Little Village wire home every month. Those transfers often cover rent, school costs or a relative's medicine, and criminals have learned to treat that urgency as an opening.

A Fraud Wave Riding on AI