The phone rings, and it is your granddaughter’s voice. She is crying. There has been an accident, or an arrest, and she needs money right now, and please do not tell her parents.
Except it is not her. It is a few seconds of audio lifted from a video she posted online, run through a voice-cloning program by someone who has never met her.
That scenario is the reason the Alabama Community College System is putting on a run of free, beginner-level artificial intelligence classes across the state this month — including two in Monroeville on Tuesday and one in Evergreen on Wednesday, the Gulf Coast-area stops on the schedule. The sessions are open to the public and require no prior experience with computers or artificial intelligence.
Why This Is a Local Story
The program, called the AI Community Caravan, is pitched broadly: what AI is, how it already shows up in everyday life, how it can support work and learning, and which widely held beliefs about it are simply wrong. But for a lot of South Alabama readers, the most immediate stake is defensive.
Scammers have adopted generative AI faster than most legitimate users have. Federal Trade Commission data show that people reported losing $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025, out of roughly $16 billion in total reported fraud losses. Nearly one in three fraud reports filed with the agency that year involved an imposter of some kind. Losses to imposter scams have risen nearly threefold since 2020. Government impersonators accounted for $920 million, up from $789 million the year before, and business impersonators — most often someone posing as your bank — accounted for roughly $1 billion.
Those numbers describe a category of crime that works by sounding familiar. AI makes sounding familiar dramatically cheaper.
The technology has already surfaced closer to home in other forms. South Alabama News reported earlier this month that a juvenile was taken into custody in Andalusia in connection with an AI-generated threat trend that had reached Alabama schools.
How Voice Cloning Scams Work
The FTC has warned specifically about AI-enhanced family emergency schemes. The agency’s description of the mechanics is blunt: all a scammer needs is a short audio clip of a family member’s voice, which can often be pulled from content posted online, and a voice-cloning program.
From there the script is the same one that has worked for decades, with better production values. There is an emergency. There is urgency. There is a reason not to call anyone else. And there is a payment method that is hard to reverse.
The FTC’s guidance for anyone who gets such a call comes down to three points:
- Do not rely on the voice. Voice matching is no longer a reliable way to identify anyone.
- Hang up and call the person back on a number you know is theirs. If you cannot reach them, call another family member or friend to check the story.
- Treat the payment method as a tell. Requests for wire transfers, cryptocurrency, or gift card numbers and PINs are common in scams precisely because those transfers are difficult to claw back.
The FBI adds one more step that costs nothing and works well. In a public service announcement on criminal use of generative AI, the bureau’s first recommendation is to create a secret word or phrase with your family to verify their identity. A code word does not care how good the audio is. Someone who cannot produce it does not get the benefit of the doubt.
The same PSA advises scrutinizing images, audio and video for imperfections, verifying a caller’s identity independently, limiting how much personal content is publicly posted, and never sharing sensitive information with people known only online. Suspected fraud can be reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at IC3.gov, and to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
It is worth settling the code word now, at a kitchen table, rather than trying to think of one while a voice that sounds like your child is crying on the phone. Pick something that is not on anyone’s social media — not a pet’s name, not a birthday, not a high school mascot.
What the Classes Cover
The caravan sessions are designed for people who have never used an AI tool and are not sure they want to. Organizers describe the goal as increasing AI literacy and helping individuals, businesses and communities understand emerging technology well enough to make their own decisions about it.
Attendees will learn what artificial intelligence is and how it is already being used in ordinary settings, from customer service to navigation to the spam filter on an email account. Instructors also address common misconceptions and work to dispel myths — a category that runs in both directions, covering both people who assume AI can do far more than it can and people who assume it has nothing to do with them.
The sessions include hands-on time with real AI tools, and participants are meant to leave with practical tips they can use immediately. Colleges hosting the caravan have described the format as roughly 90 minutes of guided, interactive instruction aimed at job seekers, small business owners, parents and general community members. Some host sites have asked attendees to register in advance because seating is limited, so it is worth checking with the host campus before driving over.
The Two Stops Closest to South Alabama
Two institutions in the region are on the schedule.
Coastal Alabama Community College, Monroeville. Coastal Alabama is the region’s largest community college and the product of a 2017 merger of three older institutions — Alabama Southern, Faulkner State and Jefferson Davis. It now operates about 10 locations across south Alabama, including Atmore, Bay Minette, Brewton, Fairhope, Foley, Gilbertown, Gulf Shores, Mobile, Monroeville and Thomasville, and serves roughly 6,800 students. The Monroeville campus is hosting a 10 a.m. session in the Forte Library, and a second session at 2 p.m. is being held off campus at the Monroe County Public Library.
Reid State Community College, Evergreen. Reid State was established in 1963 and began classes in 1966 on a 26-acre campus in Evergreen. In September 2025 the school received final state approval to drop “Technical” from its name, becoming Reid State Community College as part of its transition to full community college status within the state system. Its caravan session is at 8 a.m. Wednesday and is being held at the Conecuh County Board of Education building on Reynolds Avenue.
The Full Tentative Schedule
Additional dates and locations may be added. Times are local.
Tuesday, Sept. 15
- 10 a.m. — Coastal Alabama Community College, Monroeville Campus, Forte Library, 2800 S. Alabama Ave., Monroeville
- 11 a.m. — Drake State Community and Technical College, Leidos Advanced Manufacturing Building, Room 163 (Building 900), 3421 Meridian St., Huntsville
- 11 a.m. — Lawson State Community College, Bessemer Campus, 1100 9th Ave. SW, Bessemer
- 2 p.m. — Coastal Alabama Community College, Monroe County Public Library, 121 Pineville Road, Monroeville
Wednesday, Sept. 16
- 8 a.m. — Reid State Community College, Conecuh County Board of Education, 430 Reynolds Ave., Evergreen
- 5 p.m. — Northwest Shoals Community College, Building 103, 800 George Wallace Blvd., Muscle Shoals
Thursday, Sept. 17
- 10 a.m. — Wallace Community College–Dothan, Community Enrichment Center, 1141 Wallace Drive, Dothan
- 4 p.m. — Calhoun Community College, Research Park Campus, MSC Building, Room 1126, 102 Wynn Dr. NW, Huntsville
- 5 p.m. — Northeast Alabama Community College, MT Building, Room 106, 138 AL-35, Rainsville
Tuesday, Sept. 22
- 9:30 a.m. — Trenholm State Community College, Patterson Campus, Building B, Room B139, 3920 Troy Highway, Montgomery
- 5:30 p.m. — Lawson State Community College, 3060 Wilson Rd., Birmingham
- 6 p.m. — Snead State Community College, Snead State Workforce & Career Institute, 12228 U.S. 431, Guntersville
- 6 p.m. — Southern Union State Community College, Opelika Campus, Business and Technology Center, Room 203, 301 Lake Condy Rd., Opelika
Wednesday, Sept. 23
- 9 a.m. — Wallace Community College–Selma, Hank Sanders Technology Center, Room 112, 3000 Earl Goodwin Pkwy., Selma
- 3 p.m. — Gadsden State Community College, Wallace Drive Campus, Helderman Hall Auditorium, 1001 George Wallace Dr., Gadsden
Thursday, Sept. 24
- 11:30 a.m. — Enterprise State Community College, Jimmy H. Baker Center for the Arts, Jimmy H. Baker Hall, Enterprise
- 2:30 p.m. — Lurleen B. Wallace Community College, Computer Lab, Building 1, Room ADM 102, 1000 Dannelly Blvd., Andalusia
Monday, Sept. 28
- 5:30 p.m. — Shelton State Community College, Martin Campus, Room 2825, 9500 Old Greensboro Rd., Tuscaloosa
Who Is Putting This On
The Alabama Community College System is the state agency that oversees Alabama’s 24 public community and technical colleges. The system traces its origins to 1963 and enrolls roughly 168,000 students across credit and non-credit programs, a figure that includes two-year transfer students, dual enrollment high schoolers, technical training students, adult education learners and people taking short community education courses like these.
That last category is the relevant one here. Community colleges have long run non-credit offerings — small business workshops, computer basics, GED preparation — that never appear in enrollment headlines but reach people no other institution reaches. A free 90-minute session held at a county board of education building at 8 a.m. is a recognizable piece of that tradition, adapted to a technology that arrived faster than most institutions could respond to it.
For readers in Monroe and Conecuh counties in particular, the drive is short and the cost is nothing. For everyone else, the code word conversation is free, works today, and does not require a class.
Additional dates and locations are posted on the Alabama Community College System’s website.