Major bank unleashes wild new strategy to stop $107 million issue: 'Game-changer'
The Commonwealth Bank (CBA) is set to lead scammers on a wild goose chase while gathering important information on how they work. Aussies lost more than $107 million to phone scams last year, and CBA has devised an Australian-banking first approach to crack down on this scourge.
The bank has teamed up with cyber intelligence firm Apate.ai to create thousands of AI-powered bots that sound exactly like everyday Aussies. CBA told Yahoo Finance it has to be fairly hush-hush about how the system worked to ensure scammers didn't discover how to get around it.
But James Roberts, CBA's General Manager of Group Fraud, said the advancement will 'flip the script' on criminals who try to rinse Aussies of their hard-earned money.
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'Scammers are increasingly using AI to target Australians — we're turning the tables by using AI to fight back," he said.
"Every minute a scammer is engaging with a bot is a minute they're not targeting an Australian.
"The near real-time intelligence being gathered is a game-changer in how we help to protect our customers and the broader community.'If a scammer calls one of these bots, they'll be greeted with an Australian-sounding person on the other end of the phone.
The con artist will try all their tricks to convince the would-be victim to hand over their personal information, or card and banking details.
They might try to say there was an issue with their bank account or a dodgy payment made in their name in some faraway country, and the person needs to act quickly to prevent any money from being taken. However, the scammer will just be talking to a bot, who certainly won't be in a rush, and will engage them in 'extended conversations'.
Not only does this waste the criminal's time, but it also allows the bot to gather vital information about how the scammer works and the techniques they use.
This technology will also be deployed for text-based scams as well.
Dali Kaafar, Apate.ai's CEO, believes this will ultimately make it harder for scammers to operate in Australia.
'We're on a mission to dismantle the business models of scammers around the world," he said.
'We've designed our bots to be difficult to detect by scammers, making them incredibly effective at gathering intelligence and disrupting scam operations.
"The bots are uniquely crafted with diverse identities — varying in gender, age, tone, and cultural nuance — and fine-tuned with Australian slang and humour to improve realism.
CBA's rollout of the technology comes after a pilot program from Macquarie University last year.
Since then, the scale and sophistication of these bots has been expanded and the AI tools are able to handle hundreds of thousands of calls.
The bank hopes the bots will be able to uncover new scam techniques before they're used on the masses and lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
The National Anti-Scams Centre found phone scams accounted for the highest overall financial losses out of all communication methods used, with text scams following in second place.
That's compared to scams coming from social media, emails, and door-to-door con artists.Error al recuperar los datos
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