How AI Outsmarts Scammers: Key Points to consider

A large amount has been debited from your account. If this is not the case, report it to the respective bank. Doesn’t this sentence increase your heartbeats? The number of online scams is widely growing globally. Last year, consumers lost nearly $1.026 trillion in scams. 78% of participants experienced at least one scam in the previous 12 months, according to our Global State of Scams study. While other 59% did not report the scam to the police or other government authorities and 24% of participants believe reporting a scam would not make a difference. 45% of the surveyed people experienced more scams in the last 12 months and only 3% experienced fewer scams than the previous year globally.

The Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimates more than $1 trillion was lost by 2 billion scam victims last year, yet less than one per cent of scammers are caught. In India alone, there were 135,173 phishing attacks in the first half of 2024, highlighting growing threats and the need for strong anti-spam measures. And losing amounts sacred to us even more. Every person works hard to earn a specific amount and they lose that to scammers, to deal with these such scammers Macquarie University’s cyber security experts have invented anti-scam technology AI Apate and teamed up with Australia’s largest bank to share scam intelligence to help prevent, detect and disrupt scams in a world-first pilot program that promises to undermine the business model of cyber criminals. This technology holds great promise in combating cybercrime and financial scams globally, offering a powerful tool to disrupt criminal activities.

What is AI Apate and how it works?

Scamming the scammers is what Apate.ai uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create voice clones that keep scammers on lengthy phone calls with AI chatbots. Over two years, Apate has evolved considerably, with enhanced AI sophistication, real-world applications through live trials, and strategic collaborations driving its global impact. Apate originally comprised about 100 bots designed to represent humans of various ages, genders and personalities who speak different languages. Two years on, anti-scam technology has advanced into a sophisticated army of chatbots that fool scammers into thinking they are talking to real people.

How Apateai was created?

The team from the Macquarie University Cyber Security Hub began the AI journey by analysing scam phone calls and pinpointing the social engineering techniques scammers use on their victims, using machine learning techniques and natural human language processing to identify typical scam ‘scripts’. They then trained chatbots on a dataset of real-world scam conversations from recordings of scam calls to transcripts of scam emails, and chat logs from social media platforms help the bot to generate their conversations resembling those of real-world scam calls.

Professor Kaafar says advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and AI human voice cloning have allowed them to develop AI agents that are capable of fluent speech and can adopt a particular persona and stay on track in a conversation, being convincingly consistent in their responses.

Live scam call trials

The team is now trialling the chatbots on live scam calls, redirecting calls intended for victims to their testing prototype, an ‘always-on honeypot’ with a wide range of personas. The current deployment of Apate bots is already averaging five minutes, and the aim is to get them to 40 minutes. The scam-fighting bots contributed to threatening intelligence to timely provide information that is gathered about current phone scams and their targets; this helps organisations such as major banks, retailers and government bodies warn customers.

To tackle the scammers’ the technology also gathers valuable intelligence. The chatbots extract real-time data about the scammers’ tactics, emotional manipulation strategies, and the impersonated organizations involved in the fraud with this intelligence it became crucial for businesses and regulators to warn the public about emerging scams and catching criminals. Additionally, to phone scams, Apate’s AI-powered chatbots can also target text-based scammers operating on popular social media platforms like WhatsApp and TikTok. This added functionality is especially timely as the rise of online and phone scams continues to grow globally.

CommBank’s involvement in the project will see the bank share scam intelligence with Macquarie University’s team to further strengthen the anti-scam efforts collaborating to reduce the effectiveness of scams and prevent more Australians—and people worldwide—from falling prey to cybercriminals.

India ranks 10th globally in cybercrime, underlining the urgent need for advanced tools like AI Apate and the Indian Government has developed a helpline number 1930 for victims against cybercrimes. Think twice before sharing any personal details.