AI is making scams almost impossible to spot – so stop blaming consumers when they fall for them, writes Dean Dunham KC
The next time somebody says, “I’d never fall for a scam”, they might want to think again
For years, standard advice to consumers about scams has been simple: look for warning signs, such as poor spelling, strange email addresses, suspicious links and messages that don’t quite make sense.
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But what happens when artificial intelligence removes those warning signs?
New research highlighted this week shows just how frighteningly sophisticated scams are becoming.
Researchers tested AI on more than 21,000 travel photographs and found that two freely available AI models could correctly identify where pictures had been taken in 91% and 87% of cases.
That matters because you could post an innocent holiday photograph without tagging your location or mentioning where you are, yet AI may still work it out from the architecture, scenery, signage or other tiny clues in the background.
Now imagine receiving a text supposedly from your bank saying: “We’ve detected unusual activity on your card while you are in Majorca.”
You actually are in Majorca. Suddenly that message looks considerably more convincing and this is why I think we need to change the conversation around scam victims.
We are too quick to ask: “How did they fall for that?”
Instead, we should ask whether banks, technology companies, and social-media platforms are doing enough to protect consumers from criminals armed with technology capable of creating extraordinarily convincing frauds.
The scale of the problem is already enormous. UK Finance says criminals stole almost £1.3 billion through payment fraud during 2025 and AI gives those criminals another powerful weapon.
Of course, consumers still need to take sensible precautions. Never click links in unexpected messages, don’t be rushed into making payments, and contact your bank independently if something doesn’t feel right.
But simply telling people to “be vigilant” is no longer an adequate fraud-prevention strategy.
We are entering an era where the scam email may be perfectly written, the telephone caller could sound exactly like someone you trust and a criminal may know where you’ve been without you ever telling them.
At that point, spotting a scam isn’t simply about being careful. It’s about trying to distinguish something fake that has deliberately been engineered to look completely real.
So the next time somebody says, “I’d never fall for a scam”, they might want to think again.
Because AI isn’t making consumers more gullible, it’s making fraudsters more convincing.
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Dean Dunham KC presents LBC's Consumer Hour every Sunday from 9pm-10pm.
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