Podcast Episode

Apate sends AI agents undercover to get scammed so they can gather fraud intelligence

TechCrunch Startup News

Oct 15, 20268 min

Who’s talking

2 speakers
Speaker 18 min · 94%
Speaker 229 sec · 6%

1Transcript2 turns · 8 min

Speaker 10:02

This is TechCrunch. This episode is brought to you by Framer. You know what's absolutely terrifying? A bad website. Or worse, one that doesn't work. Avoid that nightmare and use Framer. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. So I was new to this whole website building thing, but Framer helped me get set up and running incredibly fast. For instance, I wanted to add a blog to my website. It was super easy. Starting with a basic blog page template, I added some breakpoints and then jumped into customizing my layout, adding my own special touches with Framer's intuitive tools, and bam! I was ready to start letting my thoughts flow. See why thousands are trusting Framer to help build their websites. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com slash tcstartups for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com slash tcstartups. Rules and restrictions may apply. Most companies use AI agents to ship products faster or to speed up workflows. Apate.ai sends them undercover to get scammed. Founded back in 2024 on the basis of research done at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, the startup deploys thousands of AI agents that masquerade as innocent victims. The agents can answer scam calls, respond to shady messages and emails, follow phishing links, and join social media groups to bait fraudsters. They pretend to be people of all stripes, sporting different ages, genders, and accents, and speak various languages as they try to keep scammers engaged long enough to to learn something useful. The company says its fleet of agents has, so far, wasted 17 years of scammers' time across 2.5 million conversations. More importantly for Apaté's customer base of banks, telecom companies, government agencies, and utilities, The undercover agents try to get scammers to reveal things about themselves that are usually learned only after a victim has been scammed. Bank accounts, crypto wallets, phone numbers, malicious websites, the brands they're impersonating, and other details about the scams that they're running. Aponte, one of the finalists at this year's Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, then feeds that information to its customers, who use it to inform their anti-fraud measures and initiatives. It is a curious evolution of scam baiting, But it's not so surprising given how much AI has empowered scammers and hackers. The FBI received more than 22,000 complaints of AI-related crimes just last year, which resulted in about $893 million in losses. More than $632 million of that came from investment scams, in which the FBI says fraudsters use AI to run conversations and deepfake the voices and appearances of celebrities, executives, and and trusted figures. For a long time, people have made a hobby out of deliberately stringing scammers along, sometimes hilariously, like getting scammers to read aloud entire books, or even to get ridiculous tattoos. Now, with AI growing increasingly

2Episode notes

Most companies use AI agents to ship products faster or speed up workflows. Apate.ai sends them undercover to get scammed.

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