A new report finds that 76 percent of fraud and risk professionals believe their business has been targeted by AI-driven fraud, with over half reporting this type of fraud happening daily or weekly.
The study, from anti-fraud platform Sift, finds the emergence and increased adoption of AI tools, including publicly available chatbots, enables cybercriminals to conduct scalable fraud attacks against both individuals and businesses.
Across the Sift Global Data Network, blocked user-generated scam content rose by 22 percent in Q1 2024 compared to the same quarter of 2023, showing how pervasive this technology has become in the fraud economy.
Thanks to AI previous red flags indicating a scam, like typos and syntax issues, are now more rare, with GenAI tools like ChatGPT allowing fraudsters to create polished and convincing written content. Fraudsters employ phishing emails, photo and video manipulation, and voice cloning to circumvent traditional fraud detection techniques, posing significant financial and reputational risks to businesses of all sizes.
“Fraud actors are rapidly adopting AI as a tool to supercharge their attacks, and both businesses and consumers are clearly feeling the impact,” says Armen Najarian, chief marketing officer at Sift. “Businesses must invest in AI to ‘fight fire with fire’ to not only counter the threats posed by AI itself, but to streamline the customer experience and turn fraud prevention into profitable growth.”
The report also gathered responses from over 1,000 consumers. Although 73 percent say they are very or somewhat confident they’d be able to identify a scam that was created using AI, nearly a third claim they have had someone try to defraud them using AI, and more than one in five are falling for these scams.
Confidence is higher among the young, 84 percent of millennials say they’re very or somewhat confident they’d be able to identify an AI scam, this compares to 81 percent of Gen Z, 70 percent of Gen X, and 53 percent of baby boomers. 21 percent of consumers have been ‘phished’ successfully, with over a third of Gen Z respondents falling for these types of scams.
Overall 69 percent of consumers say it has become more difficult to identify scams. 79 percent of consumers are concerned about AI being used to defraud or scam them.
You can get the full 2024 Digital Trust Index on the Sift site.
Image credit: Arsenii Palivoda/Dreamstime.com
