Despite Concerns about Bad Actors Using AI for Fraud, Encouraging Signs Indicate Its Utilization in Detection

Despite concerns about malicious actors leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to perpetrate fraudulent activities, there are encouraging signs that AI is assisting organizations in combating these issues.

According to an FIS survey of business and tech leaders, 78% of respondents reported that AI has enhanced their company’s fraud detection and risk management strategies. Nearly half indicated that as a consequence, their organization
plans to increase investment in AI over the next two years.

More significantly, many companies are delegating complex tasks to AI. Approximately 56% of respondents noted that their organizations are either scaling or fully implementing AI to support financial processes.

Firdaus Bhathena, Chief Technology Officer at FIS, stated this signifies a shift towards embedding AI into daily business operations.

The Agentic Boom

The largest financial services companies have made substantial progress in integrating AI, as evidenced by the recent growth in agentic commerce.

Mastercard and Visa launched new platforms that
transformed AI agents into autonomous shopping bots, allowing them to search for items and facilitate payments with minimal customer interaction.

Additionally, PayPal integrated payments directly into Perplexity’s chat, enabling users to purchase products or services after conversing with an AI agent.

Removing Barriers

Amidst these innovations, the persistent threat of fraud remains. Cybercriminals, who often possess a greater understanding of technology, are adept at deploying AI agents across various use cases and on a wider scale,
unencumbered by regulations that restrict businesses.

The FIS report highlighted several barriers to broader AI adoption. Chief among these concerns was the high cost of implementing and maintaining AI-powered systems. Other frequently cited challenges included a lack of in-house expertise and difficulties integrating the technology with existing systems.

Until organizations can surmount these obstacles, bad actors will continue to have an advantage.