Artificial Intelligence has been the buzzword worldwide ever since OpenAI launched ChatGPT. While people worldwide have added AI into their daily lives, every coin has a flip side, and the same is true with AI. It has a fair share of benefits but has also been put to some scary uses. According to reports, AI has been misused by people to scam people in several ways. It has become a significant concern, from creating deepfakes to cloning an individual’s voice to imitate their friends and family.   

Significant ways in which AI is misused for scamming:  

AI deepfake  

AI deepfakes are one of the common ways scammers choose to trap people. In July 2023, a case was reported when a 73-year-old retired government employee from Kozhikode, Kerala, was scammed for about 40,000 rupees by using the AI deepfake of his friend. He received a phone call from someone pretending to be his friend and asked for money for emergency surgery. Besides using his voice, he also video-called him using the AI to impersonate his friend, which resulted in transferring the money.   

AI voice cloning  

It is another way in which AI is used to scam people by cloning a person’s voice and scamming their friends and family by impersonating them.   

Extortion  

Scamsters are also choosing options like grievous extortion to steal money from people. As per the advisory by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the criminals are also using AI to create sexually explicit images to extort victims to threaten for money.   

Mcafee report on AI scamming  

About 82% of Indians fell victim to fake messages, as per the study conducted by Mcafee. Among the sophisticated trickery, the most common ways people fall for include fake job notifications or offers and bank alert messages, mentioned Mcafee.   

“AI is a scammer’s favourite tool, helping cybercriminals increase the scale and sophistication of scam messages. The speed of phishing and text message scams is on the rise. A new phishing site is created every 11 seconds. This spotlights the increasing need for solutions that turn the tables on AI scammers. There has never been a more critical time for the country’s 900 million internet users to protect themselves online,” Mcafee said in the report. The study also showed that Indians receive almost 12 fake messages or scams daily through email, text or social media.   

“An average Indian consumer spends 1.8 hours a week reviewing, verifying or deciding whether a message sent through text, email, or social media is real or fake. 49% of Indians said that scam messages no longer have typos or errors, making them more believable and harder to identify. It’s truly a sign of the times that most Indian consumers would rather subject themselves to the pain and distress of a root canal than be subjected to scam texts and messages throughout the year,” said Roma Majumder, SVP of Product at McAfee. “And it’s not just the speed and volume, but the sophistication. Thanks to AI, it can be challenging to know whether that delivery text message or bank alert notification is real. So much so that 73% of Indians believe they have a better shot at solving the Rubik’s cube than identifying a scam message.”  

“This onslaught of scam messages drains people’s time, energy, and finances. And it’s why we all need AI to beat AI. Unfortunately, seeing is no longer believing, and we need to be equipped with advanced AI technology that can stop and block scam messages in real time,” Majumder added.  

McAfee’s research revealed four key insights about online scams. It highlights the increased stress people face due to the AI-driven surge in the number and sophistication of scam messages. Hence, there is a need for a robust AI-driven defence solution to beat AI scams. Scam-spotting takes up over two full work weeks each year for users. “About 90% of Indians surveyed indicate that they receive fake messages or scams via email and text daily, and 84% say the same about social media.”  

The recent scam in Hyderabad  

A troubling incident from Hyderabad was reported, which revealed how a woman fell victim to an AI scam and lost money. It was one of the rarest and scariest instances in which a 59-year-old woman in Hyderabad fell prey to an AI voice scam, which made her lose almost 1.4 lakh. Time of India reported that the scammer sounded exactly like the woman’s nephew in Canada, claimed to be in crisis and urgently in need of money.   

It all started when the woman received a phone call late at night, and the caller informed her about an accident the caller supposedly had and the imminent threat of being jailed. While pleading for secrecy, the person requested the woman to lend him money discreetly. The woman said, “He sounded just like my nephew and spoke exactly in the Punjabi we speak at home with all the nuances. He called me late in the night and said he had had an accident and was about to be jailed. He requested me to transfer money and keep this conversation a secret.” The woman transferred the money into the scammer’s account without knowing she had fallen victim to a scam. 

• Photo by Kasia Derenda on Unsplash
• https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/topstories/ai-emerges-as-new-tool-for-online-scammers-survey/ar-AA1jGlbb
• https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/explained-how-ai-is-being-used-to-for-scams-and-what-you-can-do-to-protect-yourself/articleshow/102937587.cms