Author: admin (Kendrick Williams)

ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok, has roamed beyond social media to become a major AI developer that now is designing its own chips.

In the past, we could laugh about e-mails purporting to be from the widow of the Nigerian finance minister offering us a seven-figure reward if we could help her smuggle $18 million into the U.S.

Now, thanks to AI, online scams are much less amusing.

Bots are able to create more realistic come-ons, complete with an altered image or cloned voices. These baits can be created cheaply and quickly, allowing con artists to personalize the message to individuals at low cost, potentially getting more hits for their investment.

“We’re seeing them use large language models, things like ChatGPT to be able to craft really authentic sounding messages even in a language that they may not be fully fluent or a native speaker in,” Julia Dickson, a fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies intelligence, national security, and technology program, said to Bloomberg.

“Then with deep fake technology, we’re seeing voice impersonation calls where people pretend to be someone’s child or grandchild and ask for money – video impersonation calls too,” she added. “Men can put on this mask and become a beautiful woman and that helps them scam people all over the world.”

“You can see the efficiency with AI being utilized in scam centers,” Neal Jetton, who leads the Cybercrime Directorate at Interpol out of Singapore, said to Bloomberg. “It’s a pretty easy business model, and I think it’s going to get even easier for criminals.”

Cambodia, which has been a haven for the thieves, has recently begun enforcement after China, Thailand, and the U.S. put pressure on the government there. Alleged international con racket boss Chen Zhi was arrested recently in Cambodia and remanded to China. He also faces charges in the U.S.

Beijing recently executed 11 people captured in connection with an AI-involved scam operation in Myanmar, Chinese news services reported.

These actions are not enough of a deterrent, Interpol investigators told Bloomberg. AI makes it so cheap and easy to run scams that it’s often worth the risk to people in poor countries, they said.

Scams don’t just want you to send money. Increasingly, they offer jobs in the West to poor Asians. When the Asians show up for work, they’re kidnapped and trafficked.

“Let’s say we were, before, looking at these ads and we would see red flags, mistakes that would tell you, okay, maybe this is not a very realistic looking ad,” analyst Stephanie Baroud with Interpol’s human trafficking unit, acknowledged in a Bloomberg interview. No more.

“We’re also seeing some of these centers run by local people, local organized groups, and regional organized groups, which suggests the globalization of the modus operandi itself,” Baroud warned. “AI is going to lead us into uncharted territory.”