In an ongoing battle against phone scammers, conversational artificial intelligence (AI) bots are outsmarting fraudsters and disrupting their criminal operations. Led by Prof Dali Kaafar and his team at Macquarie University, Apate - named after the Greek goddess of deception - is using AI technology to combat global phone scams.

Inspired by a personal encounter with a scam caller, Kaafar realized the potential to outwit scammers and waste their time, preventing them from targeting others. He called upon his research team at the university's Cyber Security Hub to develop a smarter solution than the popular Lennybot, an Australian chatbot that engages telemarketers.

As an evolution of Lenny, Apate's bots, including characters like Malcolm and Ibrahim, engage scammers with various accents, personalities, and emotions. When telecommunications companies detect a scam call, they divert it to Apate's system, where the bots keep scammers occupied. By continuously refining their conversational patter, the bots gather intelligence, detect new scams, and track the scammers' behaviors and strategies.

Telecommunications companies in Australia have successfully blocked nearly 2 billion scam phone calls since December 2020. With funding from the Office of National Intelligence, Apate has been able to develop potentially hundreds of thousands of "victim chatbots." These bots strategically engage scammers, testing different approaches to prolong the conversation and gather valuable insights.

Kaafar hopes that Apate's disruptive approach will dismantle the criminal business models behind phone scams, which often involve large, multi-billion dollar organizations. The next phase involves using the gathered intelligence to proactively identify and combat scams in real-time, protecting innocent victims from financial and psychological harm.

According to Richard Buckland, a cybercrime professor at the University of NSW, Apate's approach stands out from other scambaiting methods, which can be amateur or even involve vigilantism. While scambaiting can be problematic when individuals take matters into their own hands, Apate's AI-powered model serves as a "honeypot" to lure scammers and learn from their tactics.

Nevertheless, Buckland emphasizes the importance of ensuring only scammers are diverted to AI bots, as misidentification could occur. He also cautions against criminal organizations potentially leveraging anti-scam AI technology to train their own systems, perpetuating fraudulent activities.

As scamming continues to cause financial and emotional distress for individuals, the National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC) under the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) runs Scamwatch, which has issued a warning about scammers impersonating the NASC. The ACCC advises people to hang up on scammers immediately and avoid engaging with them.

Meanwhile, the scambaiter community thrives online, with Lenny remaining a cult hero. Lenny's amusing recordings, where he engages scammers with his meandering conversation and sound effects of honking ducks and quacking, demonstrate the effectiveness of wasting scammers' time and frustrating their attempts.

With AI-powered bots like those developed by Apate stepping up the fight against phone scammers, there is hope for a future where individuals are better protected from these criminal activities, safeguarding their life savings and emotional well-being.