AI is being used to counter online fraud: Apate uses 350,000 bots to stall scammers

Australian company Apate uses about 350,000 AI bots to answer scam calls, infiltrate scam chat groups, and reply to text messages, aiming to stall scammers and gather intelligence in real time. It has so far collected more than 250,000 pieces of scammer information, including scam URLs, money mule accounts, and bank details. Its founder, Dali Kaafar, says Apate calls often last more than two hours, and a demo version tested by WIRED failed to get the AI to take the bait. Research by ETH Zurich researcher Mark Vero found that LLM-driven honeypots make AI attackers attack longer and are recognized as honeypots less often.