CommBank's AI bot initiative is a pioneering collaboration with Apate.ai, a cyber-intelligence firm spun out from Macquarie University's Cyber Security Hub. What started as a pilot in late 2024 with federal support has rapidly scaled to thousands of AI-powered bot profiles. This marks a rare transition from academic research to a full-scale, operational anti-fraud solution in the financial sector.

These are not ordinary chatbots. Each Apate.ai bot is a highly sophisticated, conversational AI agent designed to convincingly mimic real people in both voice and text interactions. Their purpose: to engage scammers, waste their time, and extract actionable intelligence.

Key features include:

• Diverse Identities: Each bot is uniquely crafted with its own persona—varying in age, gender, tone, and even backstory.
• Cultural Authenticity: Bots are fine-tuned with Australian slang, humor, and conversational quirks, making them indistinguishable from real Australians.
• Realism: The bots are engineered to sustain long, believable conversations, making it extremely difficult for scammers to detect they're not speaking to a real person.

🎬 See an AI Bot in Action

Watch how a CommBank AI bot keeps a scammer engaged in conversation, demonstrating the sophisticated conversational abilities that make these bots so effective.

The system is built on a classic cybersecurity honeypot model, but at national scale. Professor Kaafar explains:

Here's how this digital sting operation unfolds:

• Network of Decoy Phone Numbers: In partnership with telcos, Apate.ai operates a vast and growing pool of dedicated phone numbers, designed to be discovered and targeted by scammers.
• Scammer Engagement: When a scammer calls or texts one of these numbers, they're connected to an AI bot, not a real victim.
• Extended, Realistic Conversations: The bot engages the scammer, keeping them occupied and extracting information about their methods, scripts, and targets.
• Real-Time Intelligence Gathering: Every interaction is analyzed for new scam tactics, impersonated organizations, and emerging threats.
• Intelligence Loop: Insights are fed directly into CommBank's fraud detection systems, enabling near real-time updates to scam prevention protocols.

• Hundreds of thousands of scam calls diverted since launch
• Disruption of scammer operations by tying up their time and resources
• Near real-time threat intelligence enables proactive scam prevention
• Intelligence shared with telcos, tech companies, and government agencies

• Proactive, not just reactive: Shifts from blocking known scams to disrupting and pre-empting new threats
• Predictive intelligence: Anticipates and blocks emerging campaigns before they reach customers
• Cross-sector collaboration: Success hinges on partnerships across banking, telecommunications, academia, and government

🐯 Tiger Takeaway:

CommBank's AI-powered bot army demonstrates that the best defense can be a good offense. By proactively engaging scammers, gathering real-time intelligence, and sharing insights across sectors, organizations can transform from targets into hunters. The lesson: AI, when combined with cross-industry collaboration and cultural authenticity, can fundamentally shift the balance of power in the fight against cybercrime.

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