00:00Well, UK authorities say artificial intelligence is giving criminals new ways to operate at greater speed and greater scale.
00:08Fraud is already one of the most common crimes.
00:11An estimated 4.5 million incidents were recorded in England and Wales in the year to March, affecting 3.8
00:18million people.
00:20Officials say 1.8 billion dollars was stolen through fraud last year.
00:24And artificial intelligence is emerging as a growing part of this threat.
00:29Reports in which victims identified AI as a factor rose 395 percent in one single financial year.
00:39The technology is also changing how scammers operate.
00:42Criminals can use cloned voices and deep fakes to impersonate victims' loved ones,
00:48while generative AI can produce more convincing and personalized content, helping fraudsters target a larger number of people.
00:57Well, Vassilius Karajinopoulos is Associate Professor of Cybersecurity at the University of Portsmouth.
01:04Professor, welcome.
01:06How significant is this gathering in China, this international gathering?
01:12I think it's very significant.
01:14Every effort that brings together different countries and different law enforcement agencies to tackle the problem is a very positive
01:23step,
01:24because the problem, as you stated as well, is very big.
01:28It affects all the countries.
01:30And it's really important for these initiatives to exist and to expand in order to tackle the problem.
01:36Once a time, of course, we would have tried to track down the bad guys.
01:40I mean, AI means there's no bad guys.
01:43It's just AI you're chasing after.
01:46I mean, how much more difficult is that?
01:48Well, there are bad guys behind the AI, I guess, but it becomes a lot more challenging,
01:55because AI can also automate certain processes for the cybercriminals,
01:59and it makes their capabilities more expanded in terms of efficiency, scale, speed, reach.
02:09So it becomes a lot more challenging for law enforcement agencies to deal with the problem,
02:14because there's a lot more incidents that are happening.
02:17And it's democratizing as well whether someone can actually enter the cybercrime kind of space,
02:24because it makes it much easier for criminals that might not have the expertise previously
02:30to actually become very competent cybercriminals using AI to automate these processes.
02:36We hear a lot about international cooperation, don't we?
02:39But the international community's record on agreeing on things like trying to curb crime posts on the Internet,
02:46child sex images, racism, political extremism, is not encouraging.
02:52Why is this going to be any different?
02:55Well, this is a great question.
02:57I think we have many countries that have a mutual interest in tackling the problem.
03:04I think we see a lot of initiatives out there alongside the UN Cybercrime Convention,
03:11that is a very recent kind of convention, to deal with all these problems that you highlighted,
03:16also being on the side of this collaboration now.
03:20So I think we are seeing a much more concerted effort to deal with the problem,
03:26because it's affecting a lot of different countries.
03:28And it's very important to have this initiative as well.
03:31So we think it's probably a step in the right direction than not having any effort being made to collaborate.
03:39It's important to exchange the information in relation to this problem.
03:44It's very crucial that we are informed by other countries that might be facing similar problems
03:50about the current trends or future trends that might be hitting our doorstep.
03:55So I think it's a great initiative.
03:58Governments are slow, though, aren't they, in every corner of the world?
04:01Inevitably, they're slow on their feet.
04:04I mean, I wonder, can governments and law enforcement agencies realistically keep pace with the technology?
04:11This is very hard, because obviously governments have to legislate,
04:17and also law enforcement agencies need to follow certain practices and guidelines
04:21or regulatory limitations in order to integrate these tools.
04:25We know law enforcement agencies are trying to integrate AI tools to help them tackle the problem.
04:31But the cybercriminals have no such limitations.
04:34They can use whatever models they want in whatever way they want,
04:37and they don't have to follow any rules respecting human rights or anything like that.
04:42So it's much harder for governments and law enforcement agencies to have the same level of speed
04:49that we see cybercriminals adopting these technologies.
04:52But there are great efforts happening across the world in terms of limiting the impact these technologies have
04:59in terms of cybercrime and also reinforcing the efforts of different law enforcement agencies
05:04by integrating the new AI tools to help them become more efficient.
05:09Professor, good to see you. Thank you very much indeed for your time.
05:12Thank you very much as well for having me.
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