Can Verbal Passwords for Family and Friends Help Avoid Deepfake Scams? Here’s What Sridhar Vembu Said
Zoho chief scientist Sridhar Vembu has warned about the growing threat of AI-powered voice scams and urged people to create verbal passwords with trusted family and friends. His warning followed a case involving an almost perfect voice clone used to request a credit card. Vembu said voice cloning is making fake calls increasingly difficult to detect.
Zoho chief scientist Sridhar Vembu has urged people to set up verbal passwords with close family and friends to guard against sophisticated deepfake phone scams. Vembu shared a report of a caller who used an almost perfect imitation of a man’s wife’s voice to request a credit card for fuel. The real wife was at home at the time, exposing the fraud. The voice was described as slightly off in cadence yet highly convincing. Vembu noted that AI has advanced to the point where distinguishing real from fake voices is increasingly difficult. He recommended pre-agreed verbal passwords as a simple safeguard for future calls. The warning highlights growing risks from voice cloning technology in everyday scams. Sridhar Vembu Says AI Could Master Mathematics Within Months, Warns About AI and Software Jobs.
Sridhar Vembu Recommends Verbal Passwords for Close Friends and Family to Avoid Deepfake Scams
It is a good idea to come up with "verbal passwords" for close friends and family, so that we don't fall for these very convincing deep fake calls like the one mentioned below.
Sadly, AI is so advanced that we cannot tell real from fake easily anymore. https://t.co/sH76VDGUns
— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) September 13, 2026
(SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, fact checks and information from social media world, including Twitter (X), Instagram and Youtube. The above post contains publicly available embedded media, directly from the user's social media account and the views appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY.)
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 13, 2026 11:48 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
