Artificial intelligence (AI) has left a quarter of UK adults feeling overwhelmed by the growing sophistication of scams, a survey suggests. National Trading Standards (NTS) warned that AI was not necessarily creating new types of scams but “supercharging” existing ones, with shopping, holiday, investment and romance fraud now more convincing, personalised and scalable.
AI Scam Watchlist launched
NTS has launched an “AI Scam Watchlist” to raise awareness among consumers of the latest scams and how they work. The poll for NTS found one in five UK adults (19%) admit to avoiding specific online activities now because of concerns about scams – while 31% now double-check emails, messages or websites more carefully.
Some 27% are worried about becoming a victim themselves, but 79% said they were especially concerned about more vulnerable friends or family.
Top AI-powered scam techniques
The five AI-powered scam techniques consumers are most concerned about are fake websites, voice cloning – when a voice is replicated to create a convincing phone call or voice message – deep fake video, AI-generated images of products, properties, vehicles or documents, and videos of fake people that are AI generated, broadcast on social media and sometimes able to interact with consumers in real time.
NTS chairman Lord Michael Bichard said: “AI is transforming the fraud landscape, as it paves the way for a new generation of organised criminals who need little technical expertise to create convincing scams at huge speed and scale.”
“Tackling this is a monumental challenge for government, enforcement agencies and industry and we, along with our partners, will continue working to detect and disrupt the criminal networks behind these scams,” he added.
Industry and regulatory response
Rocio Concha, Which? head of policy and advocacy, said: “Which? research supports these findings and we’ve seen experts, let alone the general public, struggle to identify scams built with AI.” She added that the “old ‘tell-tale signs’, such as typos or grammatical errors, can no longer be relied on to spot scams in an era of highly-sophisticated AI”.
Jessica Tye, regulatory projects manager at the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), said: “We welcome the launch of the AI Scam Watchlist, which shines a light on how AI is changing the way scams are created and delivered.” She encouraged anyone who sees a suspected scam ad in paid-for online space to report it through the ASA’s Scam Ad Alert system.
Censuswide surveyed 2,000 UK adults between September 18-22.
