Washington, July 30 — Alarmed by the rapid rise of artificial intelligence-enabled fraud, a bipartisan US Senate panel has warned that deepfakes, cloned voices and AI chatbots are exposing older Americans to increasingly sophisticated scams, in a development with growing relevance for India and the Indian diaspora as similar technology-driven fraud spreads worldwide.
Opening a hearing titled 'The AI Deception Machine: Deepfakes, Chatbots, and the New Frontier of Senior Fraud' on Wednesday (local time), Senate Special Committee on Ageing Chairman Rick Scott said Americans over the age of 60 lost $7.7 billion to scams in 2025, describing AI as a force that has made fraud more convincing and accessible to criminals.
"AI can be used to make fraudulent videos known as deepfakes, impersonating experts and celebrities to try to fraud our seniors," Scott said. "AI can also be used to clone someone's voice, a terrifying development that has been used in heartbreaking and evil ways to impersonate a loved one and deceive their family."
Ranking Member Kirsten Gillibrand said the technology offered significant benefits but warned that criminals were exploiting it at an unprecedented scale.
"Americans deserve to trust their own eyes and ears," she said, adding that AI-generated scams were "making old cons more convincing and far easier to pull off." She also disclosed that she had written to leading AI companies, including OpenAI and Meta, seeking details on safeguards for older adults and people with disabilities.
The hearing featured emotional testimony from Deborah Del Mastro of California, who described how scammers cloned her daughter's voice during a five-and-a-half-hour ordeal in which she believed her daughter had been kidnapped.
"It was her voice. It was absolutely her voice," Del Mastro told senators. The caller demanded ransom, claiming a Mexican drug cartel had abducted her daughter. She ultimately transferred $5,400 before discovering her daughter had been safe all along.
"It was the worst day of my life," she said, urging greater public awareness. "There needs to be awareness about this, and there needs to be guardrails. We need to find out how to protect those of us who don't know about this."
Another witness, Los Angeles surgeon Dr David Amron, described how fraudsters used AI to create a convincing deepfake video falsely showing him endorsing a fake medical product.
"They used my name and my reputation to deceive the very people I have dedicated my career to helping and protecting," he said, warning that such scams could cause patients to delay legitimate treatment while undermining trust in physicians.
Paul Benda, Executive Vice President for Risk, Fraud and Cybersecurity at the American Bankers Association, told lawmakers that generative AI was not replacing traditional scams but "industrialising them".
"Generative AI is making impersonation dramatically easier and more convincing with very little technical skill," he said, adding that banks were increasingly relying on AI and behavioural analytics to detect suspicious transactions before money left customers' accounts. He argued that technology companies and telecommunications providers must share responsibility because "the best fraud prevention is to stop the criminal from reaching and deceiving the victim in the first place."
Cybersecurity expert Matthew Ferraro urged greater public education, stronger coordination among government agencies and wider adoption of AI detection technologies to help distinguish authentic content from fabricated audio and video.
Senators from both parties used the hearing to promote legislation aimed at protecting older Americans, including proposals to create a national anti-scam strategy, establish a central reporting portal, strengthen law enforcement training and study the impact of AI on ageing populations.
The hearing also carries significance beyond the United States. India has witnessed a sharp increase in AI-enabled cyber fraud, including voice-cloning scams, deepfake videos and digitally manipulated impersonation schemes targeting bank customers, business executives and families.