Macquarie University cyber security experts have teamed up with Australia’s largest bank to share scam intelligence to help prevent, detect and disrupt scams in a world-first pilot program that promises to undermine the business model of cyber criminals. This technology holds great promise in combating cybercrime and financial scams globally, offering a powerful tool to disrupt criminal activities.
Apate.ai uses artificial intelligence to create voice clones that keep scammers on lengthy phone calls with AI chatbots. Over the course of two years, Apate has evolved considerably, with enhanced AI sophistication, real-world applications through live trials, and strategic collaborations driving its global impact.
The brainchild of Professor Dali Kaafar, Executive Director of Macquarie University’s Cyber Security Hub, the anti-scam technology features realistic multilingual chatbots that can keep scammers on long fake calls and away from vulnerable people.
“Our model ties them up, wastes their time and reduces the number of successful scams,” he says.
After receiving federal government funding to pilot the AI-powered anti-scam technology, Professor Kaafar’s team is collaborating with CommBank to share scam intelligence to combat the multi-billion dollar losses suffered by victims of scam phone calls. Apate is designed to disrupt scammers’ business models – which relies on making a large profit from a small number of victims – and make it harder for them to reach potential victims.
Apate originally comprised about 100 bots designed to represent humans of various ages, gender and personalities who speak different languages. Two years on, the anti-scam technology has advanced into a sophisticated army of chatbots that fools scammers into thinking they are talking to real people.
“We used to name each of them,” Professor Kaafar says. “But now we have thousands of different bots emulating unique human behaviour.”
Time wasting plus important intel
Not surprisingly, scammers rarely appreciate being fooled by Professor Kaafar’s army of chatbots.
Professor Kaafar says he arrived at work one day to find his team celebrating their “very first f-word from a scammer” who was irate after learning he had spent more than half-an-hour talking to a chatbot.
Besides wasting scammers’ time on calls, the AI-driven system extracts valuable intelligence about their tactics, the emotions they are trying to manipulate, the identity of impersonated organisations and new scam campaigns in real-time.
This information can be used by industry to warn their customers about cyber attacks and assist regulators to catch fraudsters. “While distracting scammers and engaging them with bots they think are genuine, you essentially have an opportunity to extract intelligence from the scammer’s mouth,” Professor Kaafar says.
Professor Kaafar says Apate has the capacity to distinguish genuine callers from scammers – information it can provide industry to improve their anti-scam technology. The chatbots can also engage with text-based scammers on social media platforms such as WhatsApp and TikTok.
The development of AI-powered anti-scam chatbots comes amid a flood of phone scams globally enabled by technology that makes it easy and cheap for fraudsters to mask their location and pretend to call from any number.
The Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimates more than $1 trillion was lost by 2 billion scam victims last year, yet less than one per cent of scammers are caught. In India alone, there were 135,173 phishing attacks in the first half of 2024, highlighting growing threat and need for strong anti-scam measures.
Professor Dali Kaafar is the Executive Director of Macquarie University’s Cyber Security Hub in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, Macquarie University.