Report: Two-thirds of businesses face AI-fueled fraud regularly

Sift’s Q2 2024 Digital Trust Index reveals businesses and consumers alike are seeing an increase in fraud thanks to the rise of generative AI.

Sift, the AI-powered fraud platform securing digital trust for leading global businesses, released its Q2 2024 Digital Trust Index, which found that 76% of fraud and risk professionals believe their business has been targeted by AI fraud, with over half reporting this type of fraud happening daily or weekly.

The emergence and increased adoption of AI tools, including publicly available chatbots, enables cybercriminals to conduct growingly scalable fraud attacks against both individuals and businesses. Across the Sift Global Data Network, blocked user-generated scam content rose by 22% in Q1 2024 vs. Q1 2023, showing how pervasive this technology has become in the Fraud Economy.

Previous red flags indicating a scam, like typos and syntax issues, are now more rare, with GenAI tools like ChatGPT allowing fraudsters to create polished and convincing written content. Fraudsters employ phishing emails, photo and video manipulation, and voice cloning to circumvent traditional fraud detection techniques, posing significant financial and reputational risks to businesses of all sizes.

„Fraud actors are rapidly adopting AI as a tool to supercharge their attacks, and both businesses and consumers are clearly feeling the impact,” said Armen Najarian – Chief Marketing Officer at Sift. „Businesses must invest in AI to ‘fight fire with fire’ to not only counter the threats posed by AI itself, but to streamline the customer experience and turn fraud prevention into profitable growth.”

Sift data also revealed that 73% of consumers are very or somewhat confident they’d be able to identify a scam that was created using AI. Despite their conviction, nearly a third of consumers claim they have had someone try to defraud them using AI, and more than one in five are falling for these scams. Consumers are increasingly being exposed to hard-to-spot scams like misleading AI-generated images and imposter websites as well as pig butchering scams leveraging deepfake face-swapping and GenAI-enabled conversations, fooling even the most digitally savvy consumers.

Sift’s newest report also found that:

. 84% of Millennials say they’re very or somewhat confident they’d be able to identify an AI scam, compared to 81% of Gen Z, 70% of Gen X, and 53% of Baby Boomers.

. 21% of consumers have been “phished” successfully, with over a third of Gen Z respondents falling for these types of scams.

. 69% of consumers say it has become more difficult to identify scams.

. 79% of consumers are concerned about AI being used to defraud or scam them.

To gather these findings, Sift polled 123 global fraud and risk professionals via online survey, and on behalf of Sift, Researchscape International polled 1,066 adults (aged 18+) across the United States via online survey, in May 2024. In addition to surveying consumers, the Q2 Digital Trust Index relies on data from the Fraud Industry Benchmarking Resource (FIBR), a first-of-its-kind online tool powered by Sift’s Global Data Network, that allows anyone to access key fraud metrics across industries, geographies, and time.

To read Sift’s Q2 2024 Digital Trust Index, click here.

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Sift is the AI-powered fraud platform securing digital trust for leading global businesses. Our deep investments in machine learning and user identity, a data network scoring 1 trillion events per year, and a commitment to long-term customer success empower more than 700 customers.