Employing AI fraud: Fake job applicants and fake employers

Artificial intelligence has enabled fraudsters of all kinds to improve their efforts — and it’s a problem that’s affecting both sides of the hiring process.

For one, employment scams surged in 2023, up 118% from the year prior, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center — largely due to the rise of AI. Scammers often pose as recruiters, advertising fake jobs to entice victims to cough up personal information. In 2022, consumers told the US Federal Trade Commission that they lost $367 million to these kinds of scams. And that was largely before the generative AI boom.

On the other side, real businesses are also wary of fake job applicants who can take advantage of remote work policies to interview and even get hired in order to steal money, collect an unearned salary, or gain access to company information. In 2022, the FBI reported an uptick in complaints regarding the use of deepfakes and stolen personal information to apply for remote work positions. “In these interviews, the actions and lip movement of the person seen interviewed on-camera do not completely coordinate with the audio of the person speaking,” the FBI warned. “At times, actions such as coughing, sneezing, or other auditory actions are not aligned with what is presented visually.”

Two years later, the technology is only more sophisticated, with more convincing text generation, text-to-speech tools, deepfake audio, and personal avatars. AI tools, even if intended to make life and business easier for people and companies, can easily be weaponized by bad actors.