AI Scams: Consumer Protection

Debate between Jim Shannon and Saqib Bhatti

Monday 22nd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Saqib Bhatti)]

First, let me put on the record how pleased I was to see my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) back in his place, having heard about his health issues. I say that not just because his parents are constituents of mine or because he was born and brought up in my constituency, but because he is a dear friend of mine.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate and raising the important issue of AI scams and the use of AI to defraud or manipulate people. I assure him that the Government take the issue very seriously. Technology is a fast-moving landscape and the pace of recent developments in artificial intelligence exemplifies the challenge with which we are presented when it comes to protecting our society.

I will start by being very clear: safely deployed, AI will bring great benefits and promises to revolutionise our economy, society and everyday lives. That includes benefits for fraud prevention, on which we are working closely with the Home Office and other Departments across Government. Properly used, AI can and does form the heart of systems that manage risk, detect suspect activity and prevent millions of scam texts from reaching potential victims. However, as my hon. Friend rightly identified, AI also brings challenges. To reap the huge social and economic benefits of AI, we must manage the risk that it presents. To do so, and thereby maintain public trust in these technologies, is key to effectively developing, deploying and adopting AI.

In the long term, AI provides the means to enhance and upscale the ability of criminals to defraud. Lone individuals could be enabled to operate like an organised crime gang, conducting sophisticated, personalised fraud operations at scale, and my hon. Friend spoke eloquently about some of the risks of AI. The Government have taken a technology-neutral approach. The Online Safety Act 2023 will provide significant protections from online fraud, including where Al has been used to perpetrate a scam. More broadly, on the services it regulates, the Act will regulate AI-generated content in much the same way that it regulates content created by humans.

Under the Online Safety Act, all regulated services will be required to take proactive action to tackle fraud facilitated through user-generated content. I am conscious that my hon. Friend may have introduced a new phrase into the lexicon when he spoke of AI-assisted criminals. I am confident that the Online Safety Act will be key to tackling fraud when users share AI-generated content with other users. In addition, the Act will mandate an additional duty for the largest and most popular platforms to prevent fraudulent paid-for advertising appearing on their services. This represents a major step forward in ensuring that internet users are protected from scams.

The Government are taking broader action on fraud, beyond the Online Safety Act. In May 2023, the Home Office published a fraud strategy to address the threat of fraud. The strategy sets out an ambitious and radical plan for how the Government, law enforcement, regulators, industry and charities will work together to tackle fraud.

On the points raised by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the Government are working with industry to remove the vulnerabilities that fraudsters exploit, with intelligence agencies to shut down fraudulent infrastructure, and with law enforcement to identify and bring the most harmful offenders to justice. We are also working with all our partners to ensure that the public have the advice and support that they need.

The fraud strategy set an ambitious target to cut fraud by 10% from 2019 levels, down to 3.3 million fraud incidents by the end of this Parliament. Crime survey data shows that we are currently at this target level, but we are not complacent and we continue to take action to drive down fraud. Our £100 million investment in law enforcement and the launch of a new national fraud squad will help to catch more fraudsters. We are working with industry to block fraud, including by stopping fraudsters exploiting calls and texts to target victims. We have already blocked more than 870 million scam texts from reaching the public, and the strategy will enable us to go much further.

Social media companies should carefully consider the legality of different types of data scraping and implement measures to protect against unlawful data scraping. They also have data protection obligations concerning third-party scraping from their websites, which we are strengthening in the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. That Bill will hit rogue firms that hound people with nuisance calls with tougher fines. The maximum fine is currently £500,000; under the Bill, it will rise to 4% of global turnover or £17.5 million, whichever is greater, to better tackle rogue activities and punish those who pester people with unwanted calls and messages.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister for a comprehensive and detailed response to the hon. Member for Watford; it is quite encouraging. My intervention focused on the elderly and vulnerable—what can be done for those who fall specifically into that category?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Shannon and Saqib Bhatti

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for that response. I have heard from numerous constituents who have been victims of online scams where perpetrators ask for bank details over the phone. What steps can the Minister take to make people, especially elderly people—they are the ones who come to me—more aware of what to look out for in terms of online scams, to ensure that the money that they have earned over their lifetime is not stolen?

[Saqib Bhatti]

As I said, there will be a duty on the largest social media platforms that will require them to tackle fraudulent adverts. That will have a significant impact in preventing a range of online frauds, including romance scams and scam ads. I will also talk to the Economic Secretary to the Treasury on the hon. Member’s behalf, because the Government have a fraud strategy.