Apate Sends AI Agents Undercover to Gather Fraud Intelligence

Most companies use AI agents to ship products faster or to speed up workflows. Apate.ai sends them undercover to get scammed.

Founded in 2024 based on research conducted at Macquarie University in Sydney, the Australian startup deploys thousands of AI agents that masquerade as innocent victims. The agents can answer scam calls, respond to shady messages and emails, follow phishing links, and join social media groups to bait fraudsters. They pretend to be people of all stripes, sporting different ages, genders, and accents, and speak various languages as they try to keep scammers engaged long enough to learn something useful.

• The company claims its fleet of agents has wasted 17 years of scammers’ time across 2.5 million conversations.
• The undercover agents aim to extract information from scammers that is usually revealed only after a victim has been scammed, including:
  • Bank accounts
  • Crypto wallets
  • Phone numbers
  • Malicious websites
  • Brands they impersonate

Apate, one of the finalists at this year’s Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, feeds the gathered information to its customers, which include banks, telecom companies, government agencies, and utilities. The event is taking place this week at Moscone West in San Francisco through October 15.