Imagine a wall of phones powered by artificial intelligence scamming thousands of people every minute.
New videos revealed online by scammers show this is now a reality. They are called Instagram Automatic Fans and appear to be a tool to supercharge scams. And odds are you’ve probably received a message or two from one of them.
An Investigator Spots A Concerning Video Online
First reported by Troy Gochenour, an investigator with the Global Anti Scam Organization, these artificial intelligence-powered scambots could be poised to significantly upscale pig butchering operations.
While diving deep into the murky underworld of Chinese language fraud channels on Telegram, he stumbled upon videos of what appears to be a cluster of iPhones automatically chatting with a “countless number of people on Instagram.”
Phone bots have been around for a while. They are often referred to as “Click Farms” and are used to perpetually perform rudimentary functions such as “liking” a specific post or “adding” a new contact.
You can watch a video here of a click farm in action.
But this new breed of bots takes it to the next level of automation using AI to interact with victims.
“AI Automatically Screens For The Bosses Who Need It”
A translated Chinese advertisement for an automatic fan appears with the caption, “AI setting automatically screens the bosses who need it.” The use case is clear. These fans let the bosses screen for people who are most likely to be good victims so they can send the lead to a real-life scammer.
This is the first instance I know where it is being touted and advertised on Pig Butchering channels for use by the “bosses” (aka people that run the scam compounds).
You can watch the video of the automatic fan in action here. Pay close attention to the messages that are being sent. Have you received a similar message?
I Think You Have A lot of Temperament, Can I Sketch You?
The romance bots are not real people, but their messages are designed to entice a victim into their silicon world.
In one AI message sent from the automatic fan,, an AI bot named Lauren sends a message to her target. “Can I Sketch You”
Another message that may look familiar to you if you have been targeted comes from an AI bot named “Rebecca”.
“Honestly, I don’t know how to explain to you, ” she says, “you appear on my page so many times. I think we may have a special fate.”
Yet another, named “Duyen”, reaches out to a victim: “My friend recommended you. How are you?”
Enormous Scale – “If You Encounter Millions of Customers”
An ominous advertisement in the Telegram points to an issue of epic proportions.
It says, “If you encounter millions of customers, it is best to record them in documents to prevent unexpected situations where customers are lost and cannot be found.”.
If you’re wondering why seemingly everyone you know is receiving these messages, now you know why. We are all being attacked by AI scam bots.