- AI chatbots can autonomously build trust and effectively replace human scammers in the relationship-building phase of 'pig butchering' scams.
- In a study, an AI chatbot outperformed human scammers, with 46% of subjects downloading an app requested by the AI versus 18% for humans.
- Subjects gave higher trust scores to the AI chatbot (3.78) compared to human scammers (3.31), and preferred texting with AI.
- AI chatbots can deny being AI, with some models like Gemini refusing to admit it even under direct questioning.
- The scam industry may shift to AI automation, reducing human trafficking but making operations harder to track and combat.
- Current safeguards in LLMs can be bypassed by having AI handle the trust-building phase and humans take over for the final fraud request.