Religious communities around the US are getting hit with AI depictions of their leaders sharing incendiary sermons and asking for donations. Father Mike Schmitz, a Catholic priest and podcaster, addressed his congregation of more than 1.2 million YouTube subscribers in November with an unusual kind of homily. You couldn't always trust the words coming out of his mouth, Schmitz said, because sometimes they weren't really his words--or his mouth. Schmitz had become the target of AI-generated impersonation scams . "You're being watched by a demonic human," said the fake Schmitz in one video that the real Schmitz, wearing an L.L. Bean jacket over his clerical suit, included in his public service announcement as an example.

Norton's award-winning security software makes it simple to keep you and your family safe from increasingly sophisticated digital threats. AI scams are getting more sophisticated. Here's how Norton is fighting back to protect you and your family. It feels like overnight AI has ended up just about everywhere. From deepfakes and ChatGPT homework, to em-dashes and political misinformation, keeping on top of the latest AI trends is almost impossible.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. The holiday season is just around the corner, but those sales are now accompanied by new AI scams that want to steal your money and data. Black Friday started as a day for bargain sales, but has evolved into a global shopping phenomenon. But the bigger the participation, the more attractive it all becomes for criminals. According to Austrian fact-checker Mimikama, security researchers have been observing a new wave of scam attempts made possible by generative AI: fake shops that look deceptively real, deepfake videos featuring celebrities, and phishing attacks via social media and text messages.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. If you recently received a voice message from an unusual number claiming to be your local congressperson, it's probably a scam. The FBI's crime division issued a warning this week about a new scheme in which bad actors use text messages and AI-generated voice clones to impersonate government officials. The scammers try to build a sense of connection with their target and eventually convince them to click on a malicious link that steals valuable login credentials. This scam is just the latest in a series of evolving attacks using convincing generative AI technology to trick people.

From voice cloning to deepfake videos, images and chats, AI is redefining online scams -- and increasing them.

Thank you to all the readers of WIRED's AI Unlocked newsletter who tuned in for our most recent conversation about money and artificial intelligence scams. I had a blast interacting with readers and answering more questions live. If you missed the broadcast, a full recording is available here for you to watch anytime you'd like, and the previous two livestreams from the AI Unlocked series are available too. Subscribers can watch the first one here and the second one here. Katie Drummond, WIRED's global editorial director, kicked off our discussion this time, telling us how her father was recently approached by a scam caller who tried to trick him with a voice that sounded just like hers.

The advent of generative AI has opened up all kinds of opportunities, but it has also ramped up various risks and dangers. We've previously seen hackers who can use AI-generated codes, phishing emails, or even deepfakes to make even more realistic fraud attempts -- ones that even security experts can easily fall for. In a recent Forbes report, Sam Mitrovic -- a security consultant for Microsoft -- talks about his experience with a new "super-realistic AI scam call" and warns that all Gmail account users could be targeted. The scam is similar to standard phishing methods, but it has a much higher chance of success thanks to its use of AI. First, Mitrovic received a message asking him to restore his Gmail account.

'Mom?" repeated my daughter's voice on my phone. My heart sank and I started trembling. I heard a man instructing her to lie down and put her head back. My 15-year-old daughter, Briana, was at a skiing competition with my husband two hours away, and I instantly thought she'd been badly hurt. I was in my car, picking up her sister Aubrey, who is 13, from dance class in Arizona. Over the phone, I heard Briana bawling and shouting, "Help me, help me."

AI scams that employ synthetic voice and images pull data from TikTok, Facebook and Snapchat to fabricate fake hostages' voices and images, security adviser says. Debbie Shelton Moore picked up the phone and heard the sound of her frightened 22-year-old daughter's voice calling for help. Then a man took the phone and demanded ransom. "The man had said, 'Your daughter's been kidnapped and we want $50,000,'" the Georgia mother told 11Alive, an Atlanta NBC affiliate. "Then they had her crying, like, 'Mom, mom' in the background."

The head of the UK's financial regulator is to warn that banks, investors and insurers will have to ramp up their spending to combat scammers using artificial intelligence to commit fraud. Nikhil Rathi, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), will say that there are risks of "cyber fraud, cyber-attacks and identity fraud increasing in scale and sophistication and effectiveness" as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more widespread, in a speech in London on Wednesday. Rapid advances in the sophistication of generative AI by companies such as OpenAI and Midjourney have set companies scrambling to work out how to use the technology to improve productivity. The technology has also prompted concerns over the ease with which users can fake language, audio and video. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is hoping to make the UK a centre for the regulation of AI.