Canada’s largest financial institution is warning citizens that, while artificial intelligence tools are useful for productivity, there is a dark side to the technology.
The Royal Bank of Canadas this week noted that AI tech “has also become a weapon for cyber criminals who are targeting Canadians’ personal data with increasingly sophisticated threats.”
Global cybercrime is expected to cost more than $10 trillion this year, according to Cybersecurity Ventures, a steep rise from $3 trillion in 2015.
Although RBC’s own polling finds that about 80% of Canadians are concerned about identify theft and online fraud, the bank still warns how “the average Canadian may not yet fully understand the scale or nature of the risks they face.”
“Generative AI is transforming cybercrime, enabling fraudsters to automate scams, create deepfakes, and exploit the digital footprints Canadians leave behind every day,” explains Adam Evans, who serves as Chief Information Security Officer at RBC. “Managing your digital persona is now a crucial part of protecting your most valuable asset: your data.”
Respondents to RBC’s poll overwhelmingly reported seeing more scam attempts, as well as more targeted and sophisticated scams. And that is a dangerous combination—more frequent attacks that become increasingly harder to recognize as threats.
This threat-laden environment means that a user only has to slip and make a mistake once, despite being otherwise vigilant, to fall victim to a scam.
At a minimum, RBC suggests Canadians be highly alert to inconsistencies and unusual details in emails or video chats that could indicate signs of fraud such as deepfakes or face-swapping.
And clean up your digital traces as much as possible. The bank notes how the “data exhaust” we leave behind as we trail across apps and devices can be harvested by criminals who then use the information to enhance the specificity and realism of their attacks.
“Canadians can empower themselves by being more vigilant and careful about the information they put online, using a virtual private network to hide their digital activity, and actively cleaning up their data exhaust to help protect against increased threats,” Evans said.
Employing more than 100,000 people, the Royal Bank is the nation’s largest publicly traded company, valued at nearly $300 billion—and does use AI, including to defend clients against fraud and theft.
RBC this year unveiled “ATOM,” the financial titan’s “Asynchronous Temporal Model,” which “represents the future of banking at RBC.”
Initially developed by RBC research institute Borealis in 2023 and functioning as part of the bank’s Lumina platform, ATOM was trained using large-scale financial datasets including billions of client financial transactions, providing it with “a unique breadth of knowledge in financial services.”
Leave a Reply