Garry Tan, chief executive of prominent tech-oriented venture capital firm Ycombinator, wrote on X late last week that there is a "pretty elaborate" phishing scam that uses an AI-generated voice.

The scammers "[claim] to be Google Support (caller ID matches, but is not verified)," he wrote in an Oct. 10 post that he termed a "public service announcement."

"DO NOT CLICK YES ON THIS DIALOG—You will be phished.

"They claim to be checking that you are alive and that they should disregard a death certificate filed that claims a family member is recovering your account. It's a pretty elaborate ploy to get you to allow password recovery."

IT consultant Sam Mitrovic, in a blog post last month, wrote of a similar scam attempt targeting Gmail accounts and also using an AI-generated voice.

"The scams are getting increasingly sophisticated, more convincing and are deployed at ever larger scale," Mitrovic wrote in the post. "People are busy and this scam sounded and looked legitimate enough that I would give them an A for their effort. Many people are likely to fall for it."

According to the post, Mitrovic said he received a notification to approve an attempt to recover a Gmail account, which he ultimately rejected. He then received a phone call about 40 minutes later with a caller ID as "Google Sydney" and rejected it as well.

"Exactly a week later," he said, "more or less exactly the same time, I received another notification to approve my Gmail account recovery again from the United States.

"You guessed it—about 40 minutes later I receive a call which I pick up this time. It's an American voice, very polite and professional. The number is Australian. He introduces himself and says that there is suspicious activity on my account."