AI Bots Are Wasting Scammers' Time and Collecting Intelligence
A new wave of AI-powered tools are turning the tables on cybercriminals by keeping them occupied while defenders gather critical data.
Turning the Tables on Scammers
Apate, an Australian company, has been building an AI system for two years that does something clever: it diverts phone scammers onto calls with AI bots trained to keep conversations going as long as possible without ever falling for the scam. The goal is to give scammers just enough hope to stay on the line while collecting intelligence about the schemes they're running.
"What we really like to think is that we're building the perfect victims for scammers," said Dali Kaafar, the founder and CEO of Apate, named after the Greek goddess of deception 1. "A minute that a scammer is talking to a bot or an agent is a minute where you're probably saving hundreds, if not thousands of possible people being reached out to by that exact same scammer."
The platform uses around 350,000 bots that not only pick up suspicious calls but also infiltrate scam chat groups online and respond to text messages with the same goals — frustrating scammers while gathering intelligence. Kaafar says the company has collected more than 250,000 pieces of real-time information about fraudsters, from scam websites to money mule accounts and bank details.
Testing the System
The bots have different personalities, language skills, and profiles so scammers hopefully don't detect they're talking to AI. Like real people, they sometimes pick up the phone, sometimes hang up, and sometimes say things like, "I'll come back to you later." 1
To test whether the system was convincing, Kernel Panic tried a demo version where users played the role of a scammer talking to an Apate AI "victim." The personas were designed to show a healthy amount of skepticism but leave enough openings for scammers to keep trying. The result? The scambaiters found it intensely frustrating — and the conversation lasted over six minutes without ever getting the AI to invest in a fake cryptocurrency opportunity.
For now, even with Apate's massive swarm of bots, scammers still initiate billions of messages and calls each year worldwide 1.
Beyond Apate: The Honeypot Revolution
But Apate isn't the only effort using AI to disrupt cybercriminals. Security researchers are increasingly turning to psychological tactics and "honeypots" — fake systems designed to attract hackers, waste their time, and gather information about their techniques.
Mark Vero, a doctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, found that open-source honeypot providers are incorporating large language models to make their setups look more realistic. In recent research, Vero and colleagues discovered that an LLM-powered honeypot would keep AI agents attacking their system "significantly longer" than honeypots with predictable behavior 1.
"The agentic attackers are much more convinced by the LLM simulated honeypots and they also mark them as actual honeypots at a much lower rate," Vero said. "If these systems are built well enough, then I think it's quite advantageous for defenders."
As the focus on disrupting scammers expands, the use of generative AI to keep cybercriminals preoccupied — wasting their resources and time — is proving to be an increasingly effective defense strategy.
Key facts
- Apate has around 350,000 AI bots that intercept scam calls and messages
- The company has collected more than 250,000 pieces of intelligence on fraudsters
- LLM-powered honeypots keep AI attackers engaged significantly longer than traditional ones
- Scammers initiate billions of messages and calls globally each year
- Apate bots can sustain conversations with scammers for over two hours on average