Incident 706: Scammers Using AI to Impersonate Small Businesses

Description: Scammers are using AI to impersonate small businesses by copying their videos, logos, and social media posts. They create fake listings and ads, diverting customers to cheap knockoffs or stealing their money. This has severely impacted businesses like Bee Cups, Darn Tough Vermont, and Cascade hummingbird feeders, leading to significant financial losses, negative reviews, and damaged reputations. Their deployment of AI makes it challenging for small businesses to combat these fraudulent activities.

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Incident Stats

Incident ID
706
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2024-04-01
Editors
Daniel Atherton

Incident Reports

Scammers’ New Way of Targeting Small Businesses: Impersonating Them
wsj.com · 2024

Copycats are stepping up their attacks on small businesses. 

Sellers of products including merino socks and hummingbird feeders say they have lost customers to online scammers who use the legitimate business owners' videos, logos and social…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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