In a new report, blockchain analytics platform Elliptic revealed that crypto scammers use AI in a variety of ways, such as celebrity deepfakes to endorse products and buzzwords such as GPT in order for them to deceive victims who invest in crypto assets.
The report, titled “AI-enabled Crime in the Cryptoasset Ecosystem”, looked at the rise of AI generated deepfakes, including those of political leaders and crypto exchange employees. This was done to create a false trust among users.
According to the report, deepfakes were made of Elon Musk, former Singaporean prime minister Lee Hsien Loong and Taiwan’s eighth president Lai Ching Te. They appeared to be promoting investment scams or crypto.
Crypto exchanges also use AI deepfakes to create false, but realistic, images of their employees or leaders to make their website look more legitimate.
Scammers also exploited the hype around generative AI technology by using buzzwords or popular large language models to promote dubious cryptocurrency tokens.
AI is the target of a recent series of scam tokens. On several blockchains, there are hundreds of coins with “GPT” in their names. These include “GPT4 Token”, ‘CryptoGPT” and ‘GPT Coin”. Elliptic’s report noted that some of these tokens may reflect well-intentioned endeavors. However, a large number have been promoted in amateur trading forums by scammers who claim to be affiliated with ChatGPT and other AI companies.
The decentralised nature can make it difficult for law enforcement to find criminals and crypto crimes.
Crypto exchanges are less likely to have KYC or clawback requirements in place for their customers, particularly non-regulated crypto exchanges.
