AI Bots Are Wasting Scammers' Time at Scale
Original: AI Is Getting Really Good at Messing With Cybercriminals
Why This Matters
Scalable AI counter-scam tools offer a new front where law enforcement has repeatedly failed.
Australian firm Apate deploys 350,000 AI bots to intercept phone scammers, keeping them on calls for 2+ hours while harvesting intel on fraud operations — banks and telecoms are already using the platform.
Apate, an Australian startup named after the Greek goddess of deception, has spent two years building AI-powered bots designed to do one thing: waste scammers' time. The platform intercepts incoming scam calls and redirects them to lifelike AI personas trained to string conversations along without ever actually falling for the scheme. Calls regularly exceed two hours.
Founder and CEO Dali Kaafar frames it bluntly: 'We're building the perfect victims for scammers.' The logic is simple — every minute a scammer spends talking to a bot is time not spent reaching real people, especially given that automated dialers let fraudsters blast calls at scale.
The system goes beyond phone calls. Bots also infiltrate scam chat groups and respond to SMS, each with distinct personalities, language profiles, and behavioral quirks — sometimes they have WhatsApp, sometimes they don't, sometimes they hang up and say they'll call back. The goal is to pass as human long enough to collect intelligence. So far, Apate claims to have gathered over 250,000 data points on fraudsters, including scam URLs, money mule accounts, and bank details.
The platform is used by banks and backed by telecom companies. Wired journalists tested a demo version, taking the role of scammers — and found the AI persona convincingly frustrating to deal with, mixing just enough skepticism with just enough openings to keep a real scammer engaged.