AI has made scammers more efficient. Here's how to better protect yourself

MARK BRODIE : OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, said it canceled the planned release of its new AI model over safety concerns.

That came after a number of leaders in the tech field, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, warned of the potential for AI to lead to catastrophic outcomes for humans — including "a billion deaths," according to Gates.

Artificial intelligence and its uses have grown exponentially recently, and that includes in scams.

With me to talk more that is Brian Watson, community outreach specialist for the nonprofit ROSE: Resources Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly. And Brian, what are you seeing in terms of how AI is affecting the kinds of scams that are targeting people?

BRIAN WATSON : So, it’s a very common question. Whenever I do a presentation, people always ask AI. It’s probably the one question I always get at the end of the presentation. And from what I’ve seen, the biggest thing that scammers can do is they can clean up phishing emails. You know, in the past, I mean, phishing emails have been around for over 20 years. And you could always spot them a mile away because of the poor grammar or just weird phrases, because a lot of times they’re written by people in other countries.

But now, scammers can use AI to clean up those emails and make it look perfectly well written from an English native American, I mean, a native English speaker.

MARK BRODIE : It’s interesting because, as you say, that’s that was sort of the tell on some of those some of those emails in the past, right? Like they would use phrases that most native English speakers wouldn’t use, or the grammar was poor, things like that. You’re saying it’s getting harder to tell that now.

BRIAN WATSON : Oh, absolutely. I mean, nowadays the phishing emails read extremely well. I teach at the University of Arizona and I showed my students a phishing email from 2016. That’s the before email. And then I ran it through ChatGPT in 2026 and it was absolutely amazing how much just a few seconds running it through AI cleaned it up to the point where it was actually believable. And this was a poorly written phishing email from 2016.

MARK BRODIE : Well, so I guess the question now is, you know, a lot of folks say that they can sort of detect when something has been written by AI. Is that what folks need to be looking for now as opposed to something that was maybe written by somebody for whom English is not their first language?

BRIAN WATSON : So, yeah, so now some of the clues are gone: the spelling errors, the grammar, the weird phrasing. Now we just have to get to the point where we have to assume that every email sent to you from someone you don’t know could be a scam. So, I’m not talking living in fear, but it’s just having a healthy level of skepticism. Every email, look at it and say, "Could this be a scam?" Look and see where it came from. Are they asking me for my personal information or my bank account information? Is there a sense of urgency they’re trying to create?

So, I think the key is just healthy level of skepticism, slow down, and then my other big recommendation is don’t do anything on your cell phone. Your smartphone is so, that screen is so small. Wait till you get , look on a big screen, take your time, and a lot of times you’ll figure out that it is a phishing email.

MARK BRODIE : I’m wondering also the speed and the frequency with which scammers can send out messages. I would imagine that using AI would make this a much more efficient operation if you’re a scammer.

BRIAN WATSON : Well, and the E-word is very important there. AI makes scammers a lot more efficient. You can have one person utilizing AI, and that one scammer can send out thousands, if not millions, of phishing emails or wrong number texts. And they just send them out like an army of bad actors. So, instead of them having to type up and send a bunch of emails one by one or copying and pasting them, these bots that they use automate it. So, they go out, there’s so many that it’s just absolutely overwhelming.

MARK BRODIE : What the the photo and video component of AI? Like, are you seeing anything related to that that that scammers are using to try to get people to fall for what they’re doing?

BRIAN WATSON : Right, so the I’ve seen demonstrations of voice cloning at some presentations I’ve done with a Sheriff’s Department here in southern Arizona. And it was crazy how they could just take a a few sentence a sentence or two of someone speaking, and then they could make that say anything with the talk-to-text, absolutely incredible technology.

But the thing is with that, it’s very labor-intensive. And if you wanted to target someone in, say, the grandparent scam, you would have to do some work, get their voice, and then call someone. But what if they didn’t answer? You know, so it’s wasted.

But I think it can be used in romance scams when the victim or the person that they’re grooming is insisting on a video call. The scammers can actually do the deepfake videos and make it look more legitimate, because the thing with most romance scams is the scammers just prefer to keep everything offline, either text message or using an app to communicate.

MARK BRODIE : Well, so it sounds like sort of the bottom line here is that you’re not necessarily seeing more scams because of AI, but AI is making the scammers that are already out there sort of makes it easier for them to do what they’re doing, makes it faster, more efficient, makes it maybe a little better, the scams, the emails that they’re sending and texts they’re sending out.

BRIAN WATSON : Right, well, just AI we can use as ordinary people to improve our writing, become more efficient, scammers are using the same technology. They become more efficient. They can send out more emails, send out more text messages, and and they’re just better at it.

You know, every time technology comes around, it’s a cat-and-mouse game with government investigators and criminals, 'cause both sides get the improved technology. I mean, think of something like cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is, you know, has its benefits, but there’s also some negative aspects because criminals can use it for the anonymity.

MARK BRODIE : So, there’s been all this talk , you know, should government be involved in this in some kind of regulation? I’m curious, you know, I don’t want to ask you to weigh in on whether you think Congress is going to do anything, but if the government were to try to institute some kind of regulations on AI, is there any reason to think that they would be thinking scams and the kinds of things that you work on every day in terms of things to try to crack down on?

BRIAN WATSON : Yeah, I mean, the thing with scammers and AI, whatever rules you put in place and laws, the scammers are not going to obey because they’re scammers by nature, especially if they’re overseas in another country. What happens is a lot of times we set up laws for our companies and the law-abiding companies will follow those policies.

So, it’s it’s always going to come back to consumer awareness and protecting ourselves and just being very cautious. It’s it’s not the best way to live in terms of, you know, always having to question everything, but that’s the society and that’s the technology that that we have now.

MARK BRODIE : When you do presentations and when you talk to folks, like how how freaked out do people seem to be AI?

BRIAN WATSON : Um, it’s like I said at the beginning, at the end of every presentation, there always seems to be a question AI, and and I usually give them my standard answer cleaning up the phishing emails. I tell people, you know, most scams actually don’t rely heavily on AI. I mean, a lot of scams, like phone scams, are old school technology. They’re just executed so well.

MARK BRODIE : Brian Watson is the community outreach specialist for the nonprofit ROSE, Resources Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly.

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