📞 Chatbots used to trick phone scammers

• Researchers have developed AI bots that trick scammers to prevent crime.
• The chatbots gather information about scams and keep scammers busy.
• The goal is to disrupt the business model of organized crime in phone scams.

Artificial intelligence against phone scammers

Professor Dali Kaafar and his team at Macquarie University have created chatbots like Malcolm and Ibrahim. These AI-driven bots are designed to deceive and keep phone scammers busy, writes The Guardian.

Kaafar's company Apate, named after the Greek goddess of deceit, uses conversational AI to combat global phone scams. The system utilizes telecommunications companies' ability to redirect suspected scam calls.

The idea was born when Kaafar himself tricked a scammer by keeping them on a meaningless call. This led to the development of more sophisticated AI bots that can handle scammers effectively.
Apate has received $720,000 in funding from the Office of National Intelligence and now potentially has hundreds of thousands of "victim chatbots" with different ages, accents, and personalities.

How Apate works

When a telecommunications company detects a scammer and redirects the call to Apate, the bots work to keep the scammers busy. They test different strategies and learn what works best to prolong the calls.
Through this process, the bots collect valuable information about the scams, including call duration, call times, what information the scammers are after, and what tactics they use.

Kaafar hopes that Apate will disrupt the business model of phone scams, which are often run by large criminal organizations. The next step is to use the collected information to forewarn and handle scams in real-time.

"We're talking about real criminals who are making our lives miserable," says Kaafar. "We're talking about risks to real people who sometimes lose their life savings, who can go into debt and sometimes be psychologically damaged by the shame."

Phone scams may become more difficult with AI

We have previously written about how AI can not only be used to deceive but also to combat fraud.

📞 Phone scams could become harder to pull off

If I were a criminal, I would focus on scams using AI. This is a real AI problem, unlike the fantasies about the end of humanity. But as often is the case, the solution can be found in the very technology that contributes to the problem.

Warp NewsMathias Sundin

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