Artificial intelligence has reached a point where it can convincingly mimic human voices—so convincingly, in fact, that it poses a serious threat to the financial industry, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Speaking at a Federal Reserve conference in Washington, Altman raised the alarm about an approaching wave of AI-driven voice fraud, calling it a “significant impending fraud crisis.” His concerns center on how AI voice clones can now bypass traditional voice-based authentication systems used by some financial institutions to verify customer identities.

“It’s alarming that some banks still rely on voiceprints for authentication,” said Altman. “That method is now entirely vulnerable. AI has made it obsolete.”

Voice authentication, especially for high-net-worth clients, became a popular security tool more than a decade ago. Users would typically repeat a set phrase over the phone to confirm their identity. But with the rise of AI-generated voice replicas, these systems are no longer secure.

Altman noted that these voice clones—and eventually even video impersonations—are becoming so realistic that they are nearly indistinguishable from real people. As a result, he emphasized the urgent need to develop new forms of identity verification.

Michelle Bowman, the Federal Reserve’s Vice Chair for Supervision and the host of the discussion, echoed Altman’s concerns and suggested the possibility of future public-private collaboration on this pressing issue.

As cyber threats evolve, financial institutions will need to rethink how they protect their customers—and AI voice fraud is quickly becoming a front-line challenge.

Source: https://www.securityweek.com/openais-sam-altman-warns-of-ai-voice-fraud-crisis-in-banking/