The internet is a great tool and Google’s search engine, the world’s largest, is trying to help even more. You’ve probably noticed they introduced AI-generated answers in their search results. The AI Overview feature, also called Search Assistant in some browsers, appears at or near the top of the search results with an answer to your query. The AI search assistant in the little shaded box is fast. It’s cool. It’s not trustworthy.
Besides the possibility of mistakes or hallucinations in AI Overviews, there could be something more sinister.
Google isn’t trying to scam you, but fraudsters are, and they’ve worked out yet another way, according reports in Wired, The Washington Post and Digital Trends.
Here’s How It Works
You go to Google and search for a company. Google’s generative AI tool, with its blazingly fast execution, scans the web and brings you back results—a little profile, some facts and a phone number. Maybe you even searched for the company’s accounts receivable or payment portal and got a contact number. But that quick helpful summary includes a phone number that is wrong. It goes to a fraudster.
A criminal has planted the number where AI Overview can find and report it. If you take the information from AI Overview or Search Assistant, you’re about to dial up a fraudster who will be happy to help you.
Scammers have seeded internet content to fool the AI scan into presenting a fraudulent phone number in it results. According to a report in Wired, it’s not clear exactly how these fake numbers are being planted. Wired speculated that they’re “being published in multiple low-profile places online, alongside the names of major companies. AI Overviews then comes along and scoops them up, without running the proper checks to verify the information.”
Coin of the Realm?
“Trust has always been Google’s currency — people rarely question the results,” says Jeem Numa Al-Azad, an SEO expert, commenting on LinkedIn. So, we fall for it.
Google is taking steps—for example, for a time AI Overview was unwittingly providing a bogus customer service number for Southwest Airlines and people were getting scammed. The writer tested that today and Google’s assistant no longer seems to be doing that, instead urging customers to go independently to the Southwest web site.
But Al-Azad is right, there’s an implicit trust in using Google and the slight warnings on its AI answers is insufficient.
Accounts payable personnel must be savvy. Internet users beware. Don’t rely on a quick result. Consider this as a new control: Take the time and effort to ensure that vendor phone number you are calling is, indeed, the vendor’s number. Do not rely on shortcuts than can lead to disaster.
To learn how VendorInfo can help you safely collect and verify vendor information—contact us.