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In the past couple of years, I’ve noticed an uptick in phishing emails that get past Gmail’s spam filters. Since I’m an author, the emails I receive are usually from so-called book clubs, full of empty praise for my writing and an offer to market my books for a (usually exorbitant) fee.
Most of the time, these book clubs don’t actually exist. Sometimes book clubs exist, but the person emailing me isn’t associated with them. The same scams are spreading through the inboxes of every author I know.
While I can’t prove it 100% Fraudulent emails are generated by artificial intelligenceexperts at McAfee confirmed my suspicions that scammers are increasingly relying on AI for speed, scale, and personalization.
“From deep-dive audio and visual impersonation scams to phishing, spear-phishing and email campaigns that exploit fear, urgency and trust, these AI-powered tactics are making scams more convincing and harder to detect than ever before,” said Abhishek Karnik, Head of Threat Research at McAfee.
more Sophisticated AI scams It may try to convince you to buy fake services, click on malicious links or download malicious files. This can lead to damaged devices, extortion, loss of funds, or even wholesale identity theft, causing enormous emotional and financial stress.
With these scams on the rise, it is important that we learn how to recognize them so that you do not become the next victim.
How scammers use artificial intelligence
AI content creators use machine learning and natural language processing to instantly generate text, whether for an article, social media post, ad, or email. The software can easily create a personalized message by directly extracting specific content that may appeal to you. The book marketing emails I receive often pull words from one of my book publicists and reorganize them to make it seem like the impostor is a fan.
The capital letters “PAUL” are one clue that this email is likely an AI-generated scam.
Since it’s so easy to create these emails at scale using AI, the whole scam comes later. Scammers wait to send you fake attachments, links or prices for their services until you respond enough to appear invested.
The combination of personalization and delayed delivery of the most suspicious items makes these fraudulent emails more likely to bypass your spam filters.
According to cybersecurity incident response analyst Taylor Peltzman, AI has not changed the target of scams, but it has made them more efficient and easier to execute.
“AI can continuously rewrite messages, use legitimate services like Google Drive or Microsoft 365, and create multi-step attacks instead of relying on a single email,” Peltzman told me. “Organizations are more likely to trust links from widely used platforms, making these attacks more difficult to detect.”
Scams come in all shapes and sizes
AI is giving way to social engineering scams, which use human psychology — things like trust, urgency, or fear — to manipulate you into revealing personal or financial information. This is often done by impersonating authority figures or relatives you trust, promoting fake products or tricking you into establishing false relationships.
If in any doubt, always stop before taking any action. Don’t click on a link or reveal your sensitive information without verifying the legitimacy of the person on the other end.
Quack scams
Phishing scams are some of the most common scams to look out for. These usually come from someone pretending to be a relative or an authority – such as banks, law enforcement or government agencies – who is in desperate need of either a payment or your personal information. Scammers can also impersonate specialist authorities, such as established professionals in your field.
Impersonation scams are particularly insidious in the age of artificial intelligence due to their ability to mimic actual humans in ways that were not possible in the past.
“One of the most troubling developments is the use of deepfakes and voice cloning technology, which can mimic real people’s faces, voices, and even the style and tone of writing,” Peltzman told me. “Fake voices are among the most difficult to detect, as even imperfect transcriptions can sound convincing in the right context.”
Online shopping scams
Scammers often create fake emails, social media ad lists, or entire websites to trick you into buying products or services, which often don’t exist. Online shopping scams try to trap you with incredibly deep discounts and fake reviews of their products or services. Generative AI tools allow scammers to quickly create emails and websites for these purposes, making these scams easier than ever to craft.
Pig slaughter operations
Pig slaughter encourages people to spend increasing amounts of money on seemingly profitable schemes like cryptocurrencies. These scams often make small gains at first to get you to “invest” more. When your payment reaches a certain threshold — a threshold that modern scammers can set by asking AI to predict your risk tolerance based on identified patterns — the scammer disappears with your money.
Be wary of fraudulent pig slaughters, where the attacker begins by building trust with the target – either through friendship or romance.
Romance scams
Some scammers create fake personas to build romantic relationships with people online. They will spend weeks or even months communicating with you and building trust. Once they establish that trust, they’ll tell you they’re having a problem and ask for financial help — then disappear into the ether with your hard-earned money. Generative AI makes this easier than ever by allowing these scammers to quickly create personalized and optimized messages for each person they are building a false relationship with.
Payment application fraud
One of the most insidious ways scammers get your information is by sending fake invoices or money transfer requests, using urgent language to get you to send money before you can notice any red flags. Payment app scams sometimes use imposter scams as well, pretending to be a real company or payment processor.
Delivery scams
These days, it’s common for people to order multiple packages a week, and even forget some of what they ordered. Delivery scams take advantage of this by sending fake shipping alerts claiming that you must pay a fee to receive the package you ordered. If you discuss your orders online, they can also use AI to generate shipping alerts that match the language of existing delivery companies.
Lottery scams
Lottery scams advertise that you have won a lottery or other prize and ask for either a processing fee or personal information before you can claim your prize. Like payment app scams, lottery scams may try to make themselves appear more legitimate by impersonating a real lottery or contest. Some may go so far as to use artificial intelligence to create entire websites to create a sense of legitimacy.
Charity tricks
Scammers may pose as charities sending you text messages or emails as part of a supposed fundraising campaign. They may set up fake charities for this purpose or pretend to be legitimate charities. AI research could make these scams more dangerous by helping scammers quickly find public posts about people donating to specific charities, reveal their email addresses and create connections in the style of those charities.
Artificial intelligence has made scammers more prevalent than ever, but you can protect yourself
AI makes it easier for bad actors to create highly sophisticated scams, making understanding how to spot red flags more important than ever.
You can protect yourself by learning How to recognize a spam link And keep your Computer or phone Safe from threats. We also recommend purchasing Identity theft protection services If you have large financial assets that you want to protect.
