WASHINGTON — Liz Benz still believes the distressed caller's voice was her son's — the tone, enunciation and cadence all matched her 16-year-old.

But it was an AI clone, making the mother yet another victim of a growing wave of impersonation scams in the United States.

Rapidly evolving artificial intelligence technology has demolished the boundaries between reality and fiction, handing cybercriminals strikingly convincing voice cloning tools to steal from people by mimicking loved ones.

Benz, who's located in Buffalo, a city in New York, was jolted from her couch by a call from an unknown number. On the line was someone sounding like her son Fred, crying for help.

She was told Fred's friend had been shot and killed, and her son — who was out at a local football game — was being held hostage.

The 46-year-old insurance broker and mother of six was instructed to deliver cash to a nearby Walmart to pay off the man holding him.

Eventually, a selfie from Fred smiling at the game returned her to reality: the call, she realized, was an elaborate scam.

"Nothing could have convinced me that this was a scam until I saw my son with my own eyes," Benz said, her voice trembling. "It was a good 20 minutes of terror."

US authorities and consumer advocates are increasingly warning of scams built around impersonating family members.

The FBI said US people over the age of 60 lost more than $7.7 billion to scams last year, a significant jump over 2024.

In April, US people lost over $893 million last year to AI-enabled hoaxes, including voice cloning scams, the FBI said.

Simple internet searches can surface a wide array of voice cloning apps, many available for free, that create realistic AI replicas using small samples — sometimes only seconds — of a person's real voice.

"It used to be somewhat hard to make these things. Now anyone can do it in seconds," said Brian Long, chief executive of Adaptive Security, a company offering training on AI fraud protection.

Since taking her story public, Benz said she has received a flood of messages from other victims, many of whom opt to stay anonymous because of the shame attached.

Elderly people are particularly vulnerable, with experts warning of rising cases of "grandparent scams".

AGENCIES VIA XINHUA