OpenAI says scammers are increasingly using its tools to supercharge old financial scams by mass-producing fake investment pitches and social media personas promising “zero-risk” profits.
In its Disrupting malicious uses of AI: October 2025 report, the tech giant reveals how scammers are folding generative AI into traditional fraud operations, using it as an engine for scale and translation rather than invention.
OpenAI investigators say the scams resemble the classic investment cons of the past, but with automation, speed, and linguistic precision that help fake firms appear credible across languages and platforms.
“The majority of the scam activity we disrupted centered on fitting AI into existing scam playbooks, rather than creating new playbooks built around AI. All of the scam operations we have identified and banned this year primarily used AI as a scaling and efficiency tool.”
The report cites coordinated networks likely operating out of Cambodia and Nigeria that posed as investment firms to defraud victims across multiple countries.
“The scammers created websites and online ads to promote the fake firms and used likely inauthentic social media accounts posing as trading experts to invite people to join private messaging groups.”
Once inside those groups, victims were encouraged to deposit money into fake trading platforms.
“Promising lucrative and zero-risk earning opportunities, the threat actors then sought to entice potential victims to make payments into fictitious trading platforms.”
OpenAI says the scammers primarily used its models for translation, correspondence and content generation to create convincing websites and social posts.
The company has since banned the accounts involved, describing the activity as a clear example of how generative AI can amplify pre-existing criminal playbooks rather than create new ones.
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