Generative AI is powering more than cool pictures or ChatGPT conversations. Criminals are leveraging AI’s ability to automate tasks to make financial fraud more sophisticated and harder to prevent. Agentic AI could be powering scams that imitate human interactions with alarming accuracy, tricking customers into making payments, giving out personal details, or providing access to their secure accounts.
Being aware of agentic AI fraud could protect you from this new wave of digital crime.
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What Is Agentic AI?
AI agents are autonomous systems that are programmed to complete specific tasks with little or no human intervention. Because agents are AI-powered, they go beyond traditional automation, constantly learning and updating themselves as required. Agentic AI is used in finance to make automatic payments and to fight fraud. But bad actors could be using the technology to bypass banks’ fraud protection processes.
How Is Agentic AI Fraud Possible?
Agentic AI fraud includes the use of these AI agents to gather information, for example, for a list of individuals who all bank with a particular financial institution. Agents may sweep social media, capturing personal data, possible passwords, dates of birth, and other potentially identifying information. Combined with AI-powered deepfake scams, agentic AI fraud can automate a fake interaction between a bank and a customer, and then convince the bank or customer that a transaction is genuine.
One example is agentic AI being used to schedule transfers from an individual’s bank account to an offshore account that’s then emptied and closed. By the time the bank realizes the actual customer had nothing to do with the transfers, it’s too late.
Or, the AI agents may call a customer and prompt them to pay a bank charge or fee. Increasingly convincing AI voices combined with scraped data might be enough to persuade the customer that the call is genuine. Services like McAfee now offer comparisons between real and AI-generated voices to help inform people of what differences to look out for.
Agentic AI is also potentially being used to support criminals in continuously improving their schemes.
Spotting and Avoiding an Agentic AI Fraud Scam
Banks and businesses need tougher security processes in place to protect customer data. Many are utilizing AI agents themselves to check for anomalies and automate regular screenings of transactions.
As a customer, you can take certain steps to protect yourself:
- Don’t share information online that can be used to identify your passwords or security questions
- Regularly change your online banking passwords or other secure login details
- If you receive a call from your bank or other business, ask for the individual’s full name, hang up, and call the bank/business on the number you would usually use
- Watch out for “tells” in calls, such as repeated phrases, strange delays between you speaking and the caller responding, or refusing to provide a name.
You can report suspected scams to the business in question, or by following the advice given on the Scams and Fraud section of the USA.gov website.
Stay Informed About AI-Powered Scams
With AI advancing and improving all the time, staying informed is the best way to protect yourself from scams like Agentic AI fraud. Sign up for scam alerts to get updates on fraud, online scams, and more straight to your inbox. By sharing info and learning how to differentiate between AI scams and genuine communication, you can protect yourself from cybercriminals and other malicious actors.
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