Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission warned about scammers using artificial intelligence to replicate the voices of adult children who claim to be in distress and then con their parents into sending cash. A McAfee survey found that these fraudsters need just a few seconds of audio from a social media clip to clone a person’s voice.
Scary stuff. However, as we’re reminded in the kinetic and raw and eye-opening three-part HBO documentary “Telemarketers,” there was a time, not so long ago, when hucksters didn’t need anything more than old-fashioned landlines, a script, a sleeping conscience and a relentless drive as they worked from a “boiler room,” cold-calling folks and using time-honored, duplicitous and sometimes illegal tactics to separate you from $10, $25, $50 in dribs and drabs. The target would feel they’d done a good deed; the caller would hang up and let out a whoop. Another fish hooked!
