May 1, 2026Confirmed
Google says China-based network used Gemini to build phishing sites for mass text-message scams
AI loose in the worldOtherDERIVED
Approved by person, Oct 11, 2026. How entries are approved
Google alleged in a civil lawsuit that the China-based network Outsider Enterprise used Gemini and other AI tools to help create phishing websites for text-message scams impersonating companies and government services. Google said the network sent 2.5 million Android messages in two weeks in May 2026 and scammed hundreds of thousands of people.
What this means for youScam texts that pretend to be from companies or government services can now be backed by many convincing fake websites made with AI tools. Be wary of links in unexpected texts, and go to the organisation's official site directly instead.
Sources
- AI Incident Databasehttps://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1534
Data from the AI Incident Database (incidentdatabase.ai), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. IAAI-21.
Source data license: CC BY-SA 4.0 (database). Report contents keep their own rights; reports.text, submissions, images and videos are excluded from the data license.
Covered by snapshot 45
da93f03b406f409940d0a6ef47b526607f82ebf457d98f69299b88aceede576a
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