How to know when you’re dealing with an AI scam.
If it’s not (a completely fake) Leanne Manas selling (also fake) diet pills, it’s (a totally bogus) President Cyril Ramaphosa promising (never going to happen) 10GB of data to all his supporters. Fraudsters are coming up with increasingly convincing ways of scamming you out of your money – and they’re using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to take online fraud to new heights.
Why AI Scams Are So Hard to Spot
The problem with AI-powered scams is that they’re so hard to spot. Those Leanne Manas video clips look convincing, as do the deepfake videos featuring the President.
Then there’s the string of back-to-school scams that’s been circulating over the summer. These include fake school registration sites, fake stationery/uniform shops and (again, fake) AI generated bursary and scholarship posts. Here, the scammers used AI to create websites that look legit. Similarly, fake AI-generated e-commerce sites are now being built with auto-generated product descriptions, phony customer reviews and fake customer service replies!
How AI Makes Fraud More Convincing
It’s infuriating, but it shouldn’t be a massive surprise that the same high-powered AI tech that you’re using to create reports, websites and homework assignments is being used by scammers to build convincing fake websites.
And because the fraudsters are using AI, they’ve removed many of the typical signs of a scam. The spelling and grammar are perfect, the branding looks spot-on, and the voices and videos are as real as anything you’d see on Netflix.
AI Fraud Detection: Spotting the Warning Signs
How, then, can you tell if what you’re looking at online is real or an AI scam?
The warning signs may be hidden, but they’re still there. Take a recent bank scam, where fraudsters used AI to clone the voices of real bank employees and call customers with urgent “security alerts”. The calls sounded uncannily real and often came with spoofed caller IDs. But here’s the red flag: the calls pressured you to share an OTP or approve an online transaction. No real bank would ever do that.
Good Bots vs. Bad Bots: Know the Difference
In the right hands, bots can be powerful and convenient customer service tools. Vodacom’s TOBi uses AI to provide 24/7 assistance to customers like you, helping you check your account balance, buy bundles, swap SIMs, and more. But scammers are now using their own bots to conduct real-seeming conversations, designed to con you. These are usually romance scams, fake investment schemes, or phony customer support.
How to Identify AI Bot Scam Patterns
You can tell you’re talking to an AI bot by picking up specific patterns:
• Responses will come instantly, at any time of day.
• The language often sounds very formal, and the conversation is quite generic.
• Bots usually give vague answers to direct or personal questions.
• Bots follow their training to the letter, often repeating phrases.
• Scammer bots usually push you toward links or payments, or try to get you to do a specific action unusually quickly.
Whether it’s a bot or a deepfake video, if a public figure is “announcing” something shocking that demands an urgent response, you should assume it’s fake until you’ve verified that it’s real.
