AI tools making scamming easier – using emotional triggers to deceive

People are always up for a feel good story, or maybe one that prompts an emotional response to help you feel you’re in touch with other human beings. Some are designed only to invoke empathy, but others are created to deceive.

In a world now dominated by AI Slop you don’t have to go far to encounter someone trying to take advantage of our better nature

According to Trend Micro research scammers are using Generative AI to create highly personalised, emotional, and fabricated stories to manipulate victims into sending money

Trend Micro’s Trend™ Research revealed how AI is eradicating the barrier for entry to running scams, making fraud easier to run, harder to detect, and effortless to scale

Imagine a poor young girl just fired from her part-time job at Bunnings and now intent on spilling the beans on Bunning’s insider secrets as payback. Well the young lady doesn’t exist and the story is complete fabrication but readers are enticed to click on the story to find out why the poor individual was so harshly treated by this big, bad corporation.

Trend Micro have found that with only a few prompts, scammers can

• Create realistic product photos that look professionally shot.
• Clone voices and produce videos that feel authentic.
• Build professional-looking fake websites in minutes.
• Write highly targeted messages for any audience.
• Generate fake paperwork, such as IDs or certifications.

And it is our willingness to share such stories that makes their efforts pay off. Even though only a small fraction will fall for these stories it doesn’t take many to be fooled to make this small effort pay off.

Now the more savvy of us or maybe we are just the cynical ones will still be able to spot the signs that something doesn’t seem right with these stories. In the case of the poor girl from Bunnings the fact that she is sitting in a car with her distraught mother in a left-hand drive car may be the giveaway.

A quick search on Facebook for “Bunnings worker fired” and it is amazing how many posts you will find from alleged ex-employees giving the middle finger to their old “employer” for such things as their political views, their unwillingness to work overtime and there is even one who claimed to be fired because they have Down Syndrome. One poor guy (with two different nametags) is only too willing to share how to get power tools with an offer so cheap “They don’t want you to know about it”. These people have no scruples and no heart.

Some only realise the deception when they are asked to share personal information or click through to a suspicious looking site and others will depend on their security software to alert them. The fact is that these scams are getting easier and easier to make and harder and harder to spot and it is the most vulnerable that are the target of this new and sophisticated approach.

So be wary, don’t lose that part of you that cares about others but maybe nowadays you need to be a touch cynical after all. With all the AI tools available it is extremely easy for bad guys to get better at what they do.