IDology has published its 2024 Global Fraud Report, confirming increasing concerns about the impact of generative AI on fraud. With rapid advancements in AI, businesses expressed heightened concerns about the evolution of familiar types of fraud - such as synthetic identity fraud (SIF) and phishing - fuelled by generative AI.

Generative AI can quickly turn out human-like text, realistic images, and even deepfake videos at scale, allowing fraudsters to create believable synthetic identities and phishing emails and texts with ease.

The main findings related to generative AI include:

- Many respondents named generative AI as the biggest fraud trend over the next 3-5 years.

- Forty-five percent of companies are worried about generative AI's ability to create more accurate synthetic identities. And with fraudsters leveraging generative AI, 74% are concerned about the potential for synthetic identity fraud (SIF) to increase.

- Concern about SIF doesn't always translate to action. Despite knowing the risk, the number of companies unsure if SIF has impacted their business or not tracking it at all has steadily increased, rising from 23% in 2021 to 39% in 2024.

Mobile and Online Fraud Remain Top Targets

While fraudsters leave no stone unturned, they continue to hedge their biggest bets on digital channels.

- More than half (52%) of companies reported an overall increase in fraud across mobile, online, contact centre, and in-person channels. Of those, the impact was felt the most in digital channels, with online and mobile accounting for 65% of the increase in fraud.

- 70% of companies report a continued or higher investment in mobile over the next 12 months, making it mission-critical to balance convenience with strategies and solutions to ensure every customer experience is secure.

- While the focus on digital fraud continues, contact centre and in-person channels can't be ignored. As fraudulent payment methods, accounts, and identities exploit vulnerabilities in an interconnected system of online and offline channels, a holistic, multi-layered approach to identity verification is essential.

"From phishing scams and account takeovers to the creation of synthetic identities and beyond, the fraud landscape is evolving fast," said James Bruni, managing director of IDology.

"Tapping into generative AI and technology advances, fraudsters can scale their operations and produce outputs that are remarkably convincing and, in many cases, indistinguishable from content created by humans. As generative AI fuels fraud and customer expectations grow, multi-layered digital identity verification is essential for successfully balancing fraud prevention with friction to drive loyalty and grow revenue."

Now in its ninth year, this year's Global Fraud Report gathered quantitative information from over 1,200 respondents globally across financial services, healthcare, travel, hospitality, lending, gaming, insurance and e-commerce/retail sectors. Positions and titles of respondents include senior leadership, vice presidents, directors, managers and analysts in risk, fraud, compliance, product, customer experience and operations departments.