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Americans reported losing Ìýto phone call fraud in the first half of 2026, according to Ìýdata as of June. Nearly $128 million of that total was attributed to scammers impersonating a business. With the advances in AI, voiceÌýscams are getting harder to detect, despite growing exposure to AI in everyday life.

Meanwhile, a 2026 Ìýof 2,527 decision-makers across 10 countriesÌýfound that nearly half of North American companiesÌýhave started using AI on their phone lines, further blurring the line between legitimate and fraudulent calls.

Below, Ìýexamines what thisÌýmeans for consumers and the businesses they trust, and how confidence in the call experience can be rebuilt.

Scam calls are using AI, and AI awareness is no protection

Most people have seen voice-cloning scams in the news: a grandchild calls needing bail money, or a sister in distress, stranded overseas. The voice sounds familiar, and before the victim knows it, their money is gone. ÌýdemonstratedÌýin 2023 that their VALL-EÌýsystem could reproduce someone's voice from a three-second recording, preserving characteristics such as emotion and the recording’s acoustic environment. Anyone who’s posted a video or audio clip onlineÌýmay have left material that scammers could use to imitate their voice. And that number on the screen? It can be spoofed.

The threat extends beyond relatives and audio.ÌýIn 2024, a finance employee at the engineering firm Arup joined a video call with people he believed were his colleagues, including the chief financial officer, and $25.6 million in transfers. Hong Kong police later confirmed theÌýother participants on the call were deepfakes.

Voice scams have been around for decades.ÌýWhatÌýdeepfakes add is believability and scalability. Some scam operations , and staffing once limited the number ofÌýcalls they could make.ÌýAI is helping to remove that constraint.

As demonstrated in , AI can now handle the tricky part of a scam conversation: fielding an unscripted question, absorbing pushback and staying plausible when the person on the other end turns suspicious, all without human intervention. In a simulated environment, the AI models completed scam dialoguesÌýsuccessfully between 43% and 74% of the time.

AI scams are becomingÌýeasier and cheaper to produce, potentially allowing them to reach more people. The question is whether people can spot them. It's easy to believe that frequent AI use provides some level of protection against AI scams, but research suggests it isn’t the case. According to , published in Expert Systems with Applications, nearly a third of AI voices went unrecognized in an experiment that asked participants to judge whether recorded scam calls were using human or machine voices, and frequent AI users did no better at spotting a synthetic caller than people who never use it.

But as legitimate businesses begin using AI to handle phone calls, an AI-sounding voice alone is becoming a less reliable signal of fraud.

AI voice has already earned its place in customer communications

Fully autonomous voice AI is beginning to enterÌýbusiness calls. ,Ìý64% already hadÌýAI communications agents in production, and 97% plannedÌýto increase their AI communications investment in 2026.

Specifically on voice, 41% of enterprise leaders globally named fully autonomous AI call handling as the single biggest opportunity in voice, whileÌý17% cited outbound AI voice use for appointments, reminders and proactive outreach. ÌýIn North America, 46% said they already useÌýAI in their voice communications.

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Consumers are fairlyÌýevenly split on whether they want an AI on the other end of the line when they call a company. In a Ìýof 2,501 shoppersÌýconducted ahead of the 2026 holiday season, 48% said they'd trust a human over a voice AI agent toÌýresolveÌýissues, while 52% were open to AI voice as long as they could be transferred to a person if needed.

But being open to an AI agent when you call a company is one thing. Receiving an unexpected call is another.

How businesses are building trust directly into the call experience

If consumers can no longer reliably tell who's really calling, the businesses initiating the call have to make it clear. Solutions exist to prove a caller's identity before the recipient picks up.

It starts with verifying the number. In the U.S. and Canada, under a framework called , the phone company placing a call digitally signsÌýthe caller ID information, and the receiving phone companyÌýverifies that signature to confirm the call really is from the number displayed.ÌýPhone companies, and the analytics firms they work with, weigh that information alongside calling patterns and complaints to decide how to handle the call. A call without a valid signature, or with a lower level of verification, may be more likely to be blocked before it rings or labeled as spam on the recipient's screen.

The system isn't perfect. It works on internet-based phone networks, so some legitimate calls still arrive unauthenticated. Legitimate calls can also be labeled as spam because of how they're placed, such as many calls in a short burst or calls from a brand-new number. Businesses can add another layer by marking numbers they only use to receive calls, such as a customer service line, as "do not originate," so any outgoing call claiming to come from one of those numbers can beÌýblocked. While this framework doesn't prevent spoofing entirely, it makes it significantly harder.

Then, there’s what consumers actually see. A separate system called CNAMÌýlets a business register its name so it can appear on the recipient's screen instead of a bare number. The recipient's phone company looks the name up when the call comes in, but not every phone company does this on every call, so the name doesn't always appear. And because the name is looked up by number, a scammer who spoofs a company's number may also trigger the display of that company's real name. On its own, a name on the screen isn't proof of who's calling.

A standard called Rich Call Data takes it further, letting businesses include their logo and a brief reason for the call inÌýthe signed caller identityÌýinformation. Those details can appear on the recipient's screen before the call is answered, offering some reassurance about who’s calling.

Support for this capability, however, variesÌýacross handsets and carriers, so many calls don't display these elements. Plus, a call with no branding isn't evidence of fraud, because manyÌýlegitimate calls still arrive without it.

What consumers can do to protect themselves

When in doubt about an incoming call, the most useful thing you can do is also the simplest: hang up, or just don't pick up, and call back using a trusted number. Not the number that called, but the one on the business card, the bank statement or the business app. Scammers can still spoof a legitimate number, but they can't redirect a call you place yourself.

A few other things worth considering:

• Treat urgent demands for money via cryptocurrency, wire transfers or gift cards as a massive red flag.
• Consider restricting access to your social media profiles to "friends only" to limit access to audio content.
• Recorded or artificial-voice calls generally must identify the business or person responsible at the beginning of the message and provide a callback number during or after it.ÌýIn 2024, the confirmed that AI-generated voices count as artificial under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. A synthetic voice that never says who's calling isn't following these rules.
• Turn on the blocking tools already availableÌýon the phone. Most carriers and handsets offerÌýthem at no extra cost.ÌýInÌýSeptember 2026,Ìýthe FCC published step-by-step guides for iPhone, Android and the major U.S. carriers in one place at fcc.gov/blockit.
• Be wary of any caller asking you to shareÌýyour full card number, a one-time code or a password. These requests are red flags, regardless of how the caller sounds.
• Report any suspicious activity at reportfraud.ftc.gov. Every business day, the FTC releases the phone numbers reported by consumersÌýso phone companies can use them to help block unwanted calls.

Tackling voice fraud is a combined effort

Beyond financial losses, voice scams also wear away trust in the calls that matter, like a doctor contacting you about a prescription or your bank calling about an actual suspicious charge.

Anti-fraud measures and the people working around them will always be racing each other, and no single fix can tackle voice scams altogether. Carriers, businesses and consumers each have a role to play in curbing AI voice fraud.

Ìýwas produced byÌýand reviewed and distributed by ±¬ÁÏTV.