Three seconds of audio is all it takes to create a voice clone that is virtually indistinguishable from the real voice, a technological advancement that is as worrying as it is thrilling because it can be put to malicious use to defraud people, said experts. Voice clones or deepfakes have emerged as the latest tool for cyber scammers, they said, as artificial intelligence (AI)-related scams are being increasingly reported from different parts of the country. Voice deepfaking started as an entertainment gig to mimic songs for Instagram reels on websites such as Covers.ai, Voicify.ai and VoiceFlip.ai but has spiralled into a larger problem with genuine AI startups such as ElevenLabs, Speechify, Respeecher, Narakeet, Murf.ai, Lovo.ai and Play.ht being weaponised in the hands of scammers. More than a dozen websites have proliferated on the internet, offering free voice cloning options with accuracy as high as 95% in 29 languages and more than 50 accents. There are also professional v...