AI Is Getting Really Good at Messing With Cybercriminals
The Australian company Apate is using AI-powered bots to engage with phone scammers, wasting their time and collecting intelligence. This strategy aims to frustrate criminals and protect potential victims by keeping scammers occupied.
Why it matters
It represents a proactive, automated approach to combating the global rise in digital fraud and cybercrime.
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Even as AI supercharges digital scamming and cybercrime, it’s also being recruited in the fight to protect potential victims. Governments around the world have consistently struggled to address the global crisis of online crime, grappling with the limitations of attempting to crack down on criminals beyond their borders. This has inspired alternative efforts, like using automation to attempt to go after scammers en masse—perhaps by spamming the spammers to squander their resources. Now, AI platforms are turning these types of experiments into real tools in the fight against cybercrime.
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