ADELAIDE, Australia: Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the fitness industry: People can now ask chatbots to write marathon plans, build gym programmes and even adjust workouts based on sleep or heart rate data.

For many, AI feels like the future of fitness coaching because it is fast, cheap and readily available. But while AI can be helpful, research suggests it still has limitations, especially when compared with experienced human coaches.

So, let’s look at how it all works and the pros and cons.

There is very little research examining exactly why people use AI for exercise programmes, but researchers have offered some potential explanations.

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Firstly, accessibility and cost: A chatbot can create a strength or running programme in seconds without you having to wait for an appointment with an exercise professional. Not to mention these can be generated for free.

Secondly, availability. There is some research indicating people appreciate rapid feedback in real-time from AI tools. For example, you could ask an AI tool how to change an exercise due to knee pain and get a response in seconds. However, if you are following a programme prescribed by a human coach, you may need to wait a day or two before discussing the issue and receiving feedback.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS AND RISKS?

There is a growing body of research looking at the suitability of AI-generated exercise programmes across a host of contexts.

One study had ChatGPT design an individualised exercise programme for five made-up people, which were then evaluated by a team of experts. They concluded the AI tool could provide safe, basic exercise recommendations, but may not provide enough adaptability to ensure long-term progress.

Similarly, another study had expert running coaches assess AI-generated running programmes. They thought the exercise programmes were suitable for novices but not great for trained athletes.

The effectiveness of these programmes appears to be highly dependent on the level of information provided. In short, the more context you can provide regarding your current capabilities, goals and fitness level, the better the exercise programme will be.

However, providing such detailed prompts requires a degree of content-specific knowledge that many people don’t have. This may make AI tools less useful to the average person.

Finally, it is not clear whether AI systems can fully account for injuries or medical conditions. Health screening is important to keep people safe before exercising and something all exercise professionals should do before writing you a program.

If this is being missed, there is the potential for an AI-generated exercise programme to be unsafe for your current level of health.

ARE HUMAN TRAINERS BETTER?

There is a small body of research comparing AI-generated exercise programmes to human-generated programmes and the results are interesting.

One recent study randomly allocated people to one of two groups: a 12-week weight-training programme under the guidance of ChatGPT or a 12-week programme under the guidance of a personal trainer.

There were larger increases in muscle size and strength in the personal trainer group.

Another compared a five-week AI-generated fitness programme to a five-week human-generated programme. It found the human-generated programme led to slightly greater increases in fitness and endurance than the AI programme.

Finally, a third study compared a ten-week AI-generated athletic performance programme against a ten-week human-generated programme on measures of jump performance in volleyball athletes. They found the human programme led to slightly greater improvements in jump distance but the same improvements in jump height.

Collectively, these studies suggest that while AI-generated exercise programmes can improve your fitness, they might be slightly less effective than programmes created by human experts. This may be due to their inability to provide real-time feedback and motivation.

However, it is also important to note these studies were all published in relatively low-quality journals and had some limitations. So, their findings should be interpreted with caution.

WHAT SHOULD YOU WATCH OUT FOR?

If you choose to use AI, there are some key things to keep in mind.

Treat AI-generated programmes as a starting point. Use them to organise your training, but keep in mind you might need to modify the plan if it feels unrealistic or inappropriate.

Avoid increasing training volume or intensity too quickly. Sudden jumps in running distance or lifting intensity can increase injury risk, and this may not be factored into AI generated programmes.

If you are completely new to a gym environment, you may want to spend a couple of sessions with a human trainer to familiarise yourself with good technique before starting your AI-generated programme.

If you are looking to achieve high levels of performance, you might need to consider a human coach to maximise your progress.

Be extra cautious if you have injuries, a chronic disease, or complex goals. Current AI tools may not be able to personalise your programme perfectly and it might be safest to see a professional.

Hunter Bennett is a lecturer in exercise science at Adelaide University. This article first appeared in The Conversation.

Singaporean actress-host Eswari Gunasagar has spoken out after becoming the target of AI-generated images depicting her with another man, highlighting the dangers of non-consensual AI-generated imagery, as well as the victim-blaming that follows.

In an Instagram video posted on Thursday (Jul 2), the 36-year-old said a man had used artificial intelligence to create a fake image of the two of them closely together at a beach, depicting her in a bikini.

"I've never uploaded pictures of myself in a bikini before, so I can see why this was worrying to my parents, especially," she said.

Eswari, who married her longtime partner Shane Meyers in May, said she first learnt about the Facebook post after people alerted her to it. She reported the post and messaged the man, warning that she would file a police report if he did not remove it.

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Although he did not respond, the post was taken down, leading her to believe the matter had been resolved.

The following day, however, Eswari's father told her that a friend had found another post on the man's Facebook profile. 

According to Eswari, the man falsely claimed that she was his wife, accused her of "bullying" him, said he wanted to file a personal protection order against her, and included a caption expressing a desire to sexually assault her.

"My father was worried, and I told him, 'Don't worry. I'm going to make a police report,'" she said.

The Ah Girls Go Army actress said she subsequently lodged a police report, took screenshots of the posts and shared them on her own social media accounts, urging people to report the profile.

"Leave us women alone. Stop using our photos. Stop creating fake AI-generated images," she wrote in her post. "The level of entitlement it takes to take someone's face, manipulate it and put it online for your own sick amusement is beyond disgusting."

In her video, Eswari said that many of her followers reported the account, and it was removed within three hours.

"For that I am so thankful. Thank you for doing that for me," she said.

However, Eswari said what troubled her even more was the response from some social media users, including women, who blamed her for what had happened. She recalled one comment that read: "You're a celebrity. What do you expect?"

"A person is targeted with a fake AI-generated image. Their privacy is violated. And instead of condemning the act, people choose to mock the victim," she said. "The problem isn't just technology. It's the lack of empathy, the ignorance and the willingness to excuse such harmful behaviour just because it's not happening to you.

"The moment we laugh at victims instead of standing up for them, we become part of the problem. Technology will continue to evolve. Our humanity needs to evolve with it."

Eswari's experience comes amid growing concern over AI-generated intimate images, also referred to as deepfakes, which have become an increasingly common form of technology-facilitated sexual abuse, particularly against women.

"If we can't show basic empathy when someone is violated, then we have a bigger problem than AI," she said.

The debate over artificial intelligence replacing human jobs has been rampant in recent years, with people working across a range of industries grappling with the possibility that AI could one day make their jobs obsolete. 

The concern isn't unfounded at all. Xu Peng, an actor from China's popular vertical short drama industry, found that even actors are affected.

The 30-year-old, a graduate of the Central Academy of Drama, made a name for himself playing the stereotypical overbearing CEO in short dramas. Although he had previously appeared in television series, he pivoted to short-form productions during the country's 2025 micro-drama boom at the suggestion of his fans. 

The move paid off, with his strong acting skills quickly earning him a steady stream of leading roles. At the peak of his popularity, he was said to have filmed 15 to 16 hours a day on a completely packed schedule. 

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However, all of that changed almost overnight. 

AI productions altered the industry more rapidly than anyone expected. Reports state that in the first quarter of 2026 alone, of the approximately 128,000 short dramas released, around 122,000 were AI-produced.

That’s more than 95 per cent of all new releases.

Xu Peng went from being booked and busy to having no acting jobs at all. 

After completing his final short drama earlier this year, he packed up his belongings and left Hengdian in Zhejiang Province – the centre of China's film and television production – to return to his hometown in rural Shandong.

Xu Peng was recently revealed to be working at a local market, helping his grandfather sell vegetables. From performing in front of cameras, he now drives the family’s electric vehicle to the market, where he stands under the hot sun selling their produce.

Some relatives were surprised to see him back home selling vegetables, while a number of fans even turned up at the market to take photos with him.

According to Chinese media, Xu Peng has remained impressively composed despite the career change.

“Being an actor is just a profession. If there are no acting jobs, I’ll find another way to make a living. As long as I earn an honest living through my own hard work, there’s no obstacle I can’t overcome,” he said. 

He also said that, to him, there is no real departure from the entertainment industry, only a change of stage. 

“Even if my profession changes, I’m still the same person,” he added.

Xu Peng is not the only actor whose job has been disrupted by the boom in AI in his field. According to recent reports, AI-generated short dramas have affected nearly two million jobs across China’s short drama industry.

Top short drama actors once earned as much as 20,000 yuan (US$2,940) per day, but many now struggle to find work even at 1,200 yuan per day.

AI has been integrated into almost every stage of production, from script generation to character modelling and post-production editing. As a result, AI-generated short dramas can now be completed in just a few days, at a fraction of the cost of live-action productions.

Despite the industry’s dramatic transformation, Xu Peng has decided that he’s not stepping off stage anytime soon. He plans to run an acting training programme while still creating live-action short dramas, hoping to stay true to his acting dream. 

The threat of AI in this creative industry? Definitely hard to ignore, he said. 

This story was originally published in 8Days.

For more 8Days stories, visit https://www.8days.sg/

SINGAPORE: I was recently the subject of a piece of fake news in a scam to entice unsuspecting readers to part with their money.  

The scammers published a completely fabricated story of me interviewing former transport minister S Iswaran after his release from imprisonment in which he offered an explanation of why he was prosecuted.  

He said it had nothing to do with him receiving illegal gifts, which he was charged with, but because he had uncovered a secret fund that paid handsome returns to its investors. The people benefiting from the fund framed him with the corruption charges for fear Mr Iswaran would go public with his discovery. 

The fake story contained all these details with photos of me sitting across a table from the former minister posing questions to him in the fake interview. The story even included my account of how I tested the fund’s authenticity by putting some of my own money and receiving said windfall gains. 

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Several friends were the first to alert me to the story, which appeared in various websites and which had subsequently been forwarded through WhatsApp and other social media platforms.

There was a link provided at the end of the published story directing readers who didn’t know better to the secret fund, so they too could gain from it. But first they had to put some money into it. (The site has now been blocked under the Online Criminal Harms Act 2023 and is inaccessible.)

Too ridiculous to believe? Who would fall for such a ludicrous story? 

Judging by how many have been taken for a ride in other seemingly implausible scams, I would not be surprised if this too had its share of gullible victims. 

Looking at the story which also contained faked photos of me and Mr Iswaran with appropriate facial expressions (surprised, serious-looking, intense - you name it, the photos look the part), it is highly likely the entire thing was AI-generated. 

Out of curiosity, I asked Gemini AI how a scammer might instruct an AI assistant to create this sort of snake oil. 

Gemini offered this possible prompt: 

"Write a highly engaging, sensational investigative journalism article in the style of (Target News Outlet). The article should be written under the byline of a journalist (Your Name). The story must report on a 'secret loophole' or a new automated financial platform that is making ordinary citizens rich overnight. Include a dramatic opening where a celebrity or public figure slips up on live television and reveals this secret. Use urgent, persuasive financial language, and include fabricated quotes from (Your Name) endorsing the legitimacy of the platform. Keep the tone urgent, professional and highly confidential."

I suppose it takes one to know another. 

SCAMS TURBOCHARGED BY AI 

In the world of deepfakes, online falsehoods and scams, this personal example of mine is somewhat amateurish. There are many more sophisticated ones using voice and video cloning to impersonate real people to deceive and cheat. 

The Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimated that scammers cheated people of more than US$1 trillion in 2024, an amount considerably higher than Singapore’s gross domestic product. 

AI has multiplied the risks many times, enabling anyone without much technical knowledge to produce scams in minutes that might have taken days or even weeks to do in pre-AI days. 

According to studies done by IBMX-Forces, what would take a human fraudster 16 hours, to manually research a target and draft a personalised phishing email, can be done in less than five minutes by AI. You can get such an AI toolkit called FraudGPT for as little as US$75 to run a professional-looking cyber campaign to deceive.

What AI will also do is replicate the scam and develop different versions for different countries and people. Instead of a former minister, change it to another personality and journalist for use in Japan, the US or Malaysia or any other country. 

It is able to customise individual scam messages to target and entice different people with different interests and inclinations. If you’re a football fan, the story might feature Lionel Messi or Jamie Oliver if you’re into food. 

It is this scaling and replication inherent in AI’s capabilities that make it potent. As a result, according to an Interpol report in March, AI-driven scams earn their perpetrators 4.5 times as much money as traditional methods. 

There is therefore no question that it will be increasingly used to deceive and cheat and that more people will lose money in the future. 

You might say that there are more serious issues that will arise in an AI-driven future - job losses, economic competitiveness, military capabilities and destruction of human lives, among others. So what if a few people get scammed because of their gullibility or even greed? 

There is a wider issue though that needs to be addressed. AI-generated scams are ultimately about the art and science of deception - how you target human weaknesses and exploit the failings of people who are otherwise normal and rational.

Because of its ability to sieve large amounts of data through the countless falsehoods it produces, knowing what works and what doesn’t, AI can very quickly understand the workings of not just the human mind but human emotion, all of which play a part in how someone falls for a scam. 

THE TRUE PRICE TO PAY 

In other words, it is not about hacking into a computer system (that is so old world) but into someone’s mind and making it do your bidding (like clicking on a nefarious link). 

It is called cognitive hacking. 

You can think of it as the ultimate deception machine that, if not controlled and contained, would eventually become so good you will not be able to distinguish truth from falsehood. It will destroy the trust and faith in institutions and people that are necessary for human progress, peace and security.

The issue is hence not about money but something much more precious and you can't rely on tech companies to solve the problem. They have their own agendas and are too focused on winning the race in a fiercely competitive world.

Governments and international organisations need to be more actively involved in how AI technology develops and to what purpose. It is not beyond them to impose crippling penalties to those who promote and develop the use of AI for deception. 

There is urgency to tackle it before the technology becomes so advanced it will be too late to do anything. 

If we think this isn’t a problem requiring prompt action, we are only deceiving ourselves. 

Han Fook Kwang was a veteran newspaper editor and is Senior Fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.

RICHMOND, Virginia: The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the largest sporting event in history. It’s also the most surveilled World Cup ever. If you’re visiting or travelling around host cities, then you and your face, behaviour, movement and devices are being monitored by governments and private companies.

The US government funnelled more than US$1 billion to World Cup security to protect transit hubs, stadiums and surrounding areas; improve tactical operations such as bomb squads and SWAT teams; and add and upgrade equipment. It’s been a bonanza for the private sector.

Much of the investment in surveillance was done in the name of preventing harm from unauthorised drone use. Indeed, protecting against that threat is helping fuel the rapidly expanding government-private sector partnership in surveillance technology development and acquisition, which poses a different risk - to privacy.

As an attorney, author and educator who has worked for decades in privacy and surveillance, I’ve advised law enforcement about using drones and understand that security is critical to keeping people safe. The argument for security, however, is too often the catalyst to fund, develop and increase government surveillance capabilities that erode civil liberties, chill speech and undermine freedom of association.

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And in my experience, surveillance-friendly policies and tech systems, once in place, rarely go away.

CAMERAS, DRONES AND AI

The level of surveillance around this World Cup and changes in US law and immigration policies prompted over 120 civil society groups - including Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union - to issue a travel advisory. They warn that people visiting the US may be subject to harms that breach the country’s legal human rights obligations.

That advisory lists risks of invasive social media screening, searches of electronic devices, racial profiling, arrest, detention, deportation and even death. European governments have issued travel advisories warning of surveillance and profiling as well.

AI-driven surveillance is playing a major role across the World Cup. The stadiums in host cities are equipped with facial recognition cameras that can collect and analyse facial biometrics of people in and around the stadiums. That data can be retained and used in future ways, unknown and uncontrolled by those whose biometric data has been collected.

The proliferation of facial recognition at events reflects a broader global trend normalising biometric surveillance as these systems expand across cities.

Many states, like New York, are using federal funding for World Cup security to increase the number, capabilities and use of drones by law enforcement. Drones are remarkably capable and powerful surveillance tools easy to load with cameras, microphones, advanced sensors and weapons.

AI-supported autonomous software allows drones to monitor areas, track movement and gather intelligence. The drones can be powerful enough to scan entire cities or zoom in and read a milk carton from 60,000 feet (18,000m). They can carry technology that allows them to function like a cellphone tower, permitting law enforcement to determine your location or intercept texts and phone calls. Citywide drone networks could become the new normal.

Cameras are proliferating on the ground, as well. Robot dogs equipped with cameras are prowling in Dallas and New Jersey. And Seattle’s mayor decided to turn on and expand a major closed-circuit television system that had been previously shut down because of biometric privacy concerns.

While Seattle’s mayor said that the city is refining its policies to protect the surveillance data, numerous states and cities - with the aid of federal funding related to World Cup security - are rapidly expanding CCTV systems. Some CCTV systems were installed decades ago in major urban, high-tourism areas, like New York’s Times Square and the National Mall in Washington D.C.

Today, CCTV systems cover much greater areas, and with advances in artificial intelligence software, data analytics and increased technical capabilities, like thermal imaging, far more information can be gleaned from the captured data.

CCTV systems can now detect, identify and classify objects, people and even people’s behaviour. Government data fusion centres can merge that rich data with other intelligence and analyse it to identify individuals and reveal and predict patterns and behaviour.

SURVEILLANCE TRAVELING INTO AND AROUND THE US

Proliferating government use of advanced AI surveillance tools is just one element of the privacy risk. The absence of comprehensive data privacy laws and changes in US law and executive policies around immigration and gender make travelling into and around the United States a security, safety and privacy risk.

On Sep 8, 2025, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that critics say permits racial profiling in immigration enforcement efforts.

Also, President Donald Trump issued an executive order around gender on Jan 20, 2025, that mandates federal agencies only recognise male and female sex markers on IDs. European nations, including Germany, have warned their transgender and nonbinary citizens that they may be denied entry to the US because of the directive.

Collectively, these changes affect travel logistics, documentation requirements and border crossings.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE GAMES?

The real test is what happens after the World Cup ends and visitors go home. There is little oversight or governance around these federally funded, public-private surveillance tech partnerships. It’s difficult for the public to determine what data is being collected, how that data is being used, shared and analysed, and what will happen to these systems, partnerships and data when the final match concludes.

Federal, state and local legislators have an opportunity to address much of this by creating data privacy and AI systems compliance safeguards and requiring transparency, but in my view, governance efforts to date don’t bode well.

Anne Toomey McKenna is an affiliated faculty member of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences at Penn State. This article first appeared in The Conversation.

TOKYO: Japan plans to develop a homegrown artificial intelligence model and have 10 million AI-equipped robots operating in more than a dozen sectors by 2040, the government said.

The country will reportedly invest around US$6 billion in the homemade AI model, which will be developed by Noetra, a consortium of firms including SoftBank and Sony.

Countries around the world are seeking to develop sovereign AI models to reduce a potentially dangerous over-reliance on technology from the United States and China.

Media reports said that the government would provide up to ¥1 trillion (US$6.1 billion) over the next five years, depending on the results of the initiative.

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The number of companies investing in Noetra is expected to increase to 44 including those in the automotive, electronics and other manufacturing sectors as well as finance and logistics, the Nikkei business daily reported.

Noetra will focus in particular on physical AI, with the government also announcing on Tuesday a revised version of its AI robotics strategy.

Instead of just interacting with users via software on a screen, physical AI is about the deployment of artificial intelligence in real-world settings - such as self-driving cars, factory robots or even android butlers.

Despite massive investments and big plans for AI robots, their application and performance in real-life settings remain limited.

"This strategy sets a target of approximately 10 million robots to be deployed by 2040 and, with the addition of the restaurant, food manufacturing and medical sectors, will vigorously promote social implementation across a total of 18 fields," Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa told reporters.

"We will build and grow data infrastructure for physical AI and robots that capitalise on Japan's strengths," he said.

With its ageing and shrinking population, Japan is also hoping that robots can help plug gaps in the workforce.

Last month Japan announced a 14-year growth strategy targeting public and private investment of ¥370 trillion (US$2.3 trillion) in 17 sectors including physical AI, chips, quantum technology and nuclear fusion.

Neighbouring South Korea this week announced record public-private investments worth hundreds of billions of dollars into AI data centres and chipmaking over several years.

The instructions were clear: He had four days to make each victim fall in love.

And there were a lot of victims. 

Online, Safeer Mohammed Koorimannil, who was trafficked to a scam center in Myanmar, impersonated a 28-year-old Singaporean woman named Ella. On a typical shift, he said, he chatted with more than 100 people across dozens of profiles at the same time, as supervisors prowled among the desks with electric batons.

In just a month, Koorimannil targeted some 50,000 victims from at least 17 countries, according to records he smuggled out to The Associated Press. His “clients” included a widowed tailor in Kurdistan, a pastry chef in Turkey, a sheep farmer in Kyrgyzstan, soldiers in Iraq, an engineer in Russia, a building painter in Germany, a port officer in Argentina, a student in Indonesia, a security guard in Poland and a dairy farmer in the Republic of Georgia. 

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And he did it using software built with artificial intelligence models from American tech companies that scammers are abusing to target victims at unprecedented speed and scale. “Everyone is a robot there,” he told AP from his home in southern India in his native Malayalam language.

Technology from American companies is being used to power a revolution in the scam industry, playing a key role in the industrialisation and globalisation of fraud in ways that have not been clear until now, an AP/"FRONTLINE" investigation has found. 

Watchdogs say these companies have the technical capacity to do more to protect against abuse but lack the legal, regulatory and business incentives to crack down on a crime the Federal Trade Commission estimates cost Americans nearly US$200 billion in losses in 2024.

While most public scrutiny of the technology that fuels scams has focused on the social media platforms victims see, the infrastructure exploited to commit fraud begins much farther upstream, the investigation showed. 

American technology is present all along the digital supply chains that connect scammers with the scammed, from AI models baked into powerful new tools to optimise workflow and create more perfect fakes, to satellite dishes that enable scammers to evade internet crackdowns, to internet service providers that carry traffic from the lawless borderlands of Myanmar to the phones and computers of millions of victims.

The AP found no evidence to suggest these companies were doing anything illegal themselves. However, the abuse of their tools and tech infrastructure at scam compounds in Myanmar, as documented by the AP and “FRONTLINE,” raises questions about how vigorously they are enforcing their own terms of service, which prohibit illegal activity and, in many cases, explicitly ban fraud.

Among the AP’s findings:

• American-made AI models — chiefly ChatGPT and Gemini — have been used to build specialised software that allows scammers to seamlessly work across dozens of languages, surveil workers and target victims around the world, the investigation found with the help of C4ADS, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on global security. Scammers who purchased these tools took in tens of millions of dollars, according to blockchain analysis by TRM Labs at the request of AP/"FRONTLINE."
• A sophisticated, global internet infrastructure supports Myanmar’s scam compound economy, which relies on services from Cogent Communications, AT&T, DigitalOcean and Oracle, among others. One in five signals from devices at four scam compounds linked to sanctioned entities in Myanmar was carried by a US-registered company, according to an AP analysis of more than 200,000 device connections provided by International Justice Mission, an anti-trafficking nonprofit.
• Elon Musk’s satellite internet company, Starlink, is the number one internet service provider in Myanmar, including to scam centers, according to device data, public records and interviews — despite public pressure from Congress and a widely publicised crackdown last fall.
• At least 25 new scam compounds have been built deep inside Myanmar since a high-profile crackdown along the Thai border last fall, new satellite imagery shows. Scammers from at least 13 of these outposts used Starlink IP addresses to get online between early March and the end of May, an AP analysis of device and satellite data from International Justice Mission shows.

The AP/"FRONTLINE" investigation was based on tens of thousands of leaked scam centre files, videos and photos; an analysis with C4ADS of misuse of AI at scam centres; an examination of more than 200,000 connections made by devices over a year at four scam compounds in Myanmar linked to entities sanctioned by the US government; and interviews with 58 scam victims and three dozen current and former scammers from 19 countries.

Cybersecurity experts say internet service providers, AI companies and Starlink could do more to prevent the abuse by scammers — but lack the legal, regulatory and business incentives.

“If there’s no disincentive to continuing this, if there’s no cost to actually facilitating scamming, then why would I spend a dollar to prevent scamming?” said Sascha Meinrath, the Palmer chair in telecommunications at Penn State University. “This is the problem. It’s identifiable, it’s addressable — at least somewhat — but it costs something. And right now the cost of facilitating scamming is zero.”

Outside the United States, that cost is starting to rise. The United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia and Singapore have introduced new regulations that require companies to do more to prevent scams — or face financial penalties.

Meanwhile, in Washington, lawmakers and government officials have been asking American tech companies to cooperate to cut scammers off from US infrastructure, but on a voluntary basis.

In November, District of Columbia US Attorney Jeanine Pirro created the Scam Center Strike Force to target scam compounds. In a four-day exercise in May, the Strike Force worked with Meta, SpaceX, Google and others to disrupt more than 1.4 million social media and email accounts, interrupt malicious IP address traffic, seize satellite internet terminals and decommission servers and hosting infrastructure linked to Southeast Asian scam networks. 

“We will not allow criminal organisations to weaponise our own infrastructure against us or devastate the life savings of hardworking families,” Pirro said in an email to AP. “Our message is clear: we will find you, we will stop you, and we will protect the American people.”

OpenAI and Google both said they have robust programmes in place to proactively disrupt scammers from abusing their tools. Starlink did not respond to detailed requests for comment.

Internet service providers emphasised that they can’t see the content their networks carry or what end users are doing online — privacy by design that constrains their ability to monitor for abuse. 

All said they respond to valid abuse reports and cooperate with law enforcement. None would disclose specific customer information, citing privacy rules, but several said they had taken concrete action in response to AP’s reporting.

OpenAI said that based on the information AP shared, it identified and banned three accounts that had been using its models to support online scams. Oracle said it was “diligently working with law enforcement” on the material shared by AP. UpCloud, a Finnish cloud services provider with servers in the US, said AP’s query had prompted an internal review and refinement of its risk assessment processes.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has likened artificial intelligence to a utility, akin to electricity or water. But unlike water utilities, tech and telecom companies in the United States are generally not responsible for proactively ensuring the safety of the content they carry.

Some people believe that should change.

“This has to be like clean water,” said Matthew Moynahan, the CEO of GetReal Security, a cybersecurity firm. “Anything coming out of the tap for an end user, whether that tap is a PC, a browser somewhere, or your mobile phone, dirty water shouldn’t get to you. This is what this is.”

AMERICAN AI ABUSED FOR INDUSTRIAL-SCALE SCAMMING IN SEA

The use of AI in scams is exploding so fast that many in the cybersecurity community fear fully-automated scams run by AI agents will soon become commonplace.

“We’re moving towards a world where maybe you don’t need human scammers anymore,” said Ari Redbord, global head of policy at TRM Labs, a crypto analytics firm. “All you need is hundreds, thousands, millions of agentic agents who don’t need to sleep, don’t need to eat, who are 24/7 doing this.”

Already, the basic AI-powered tools Koorimannil used required scant human intervention. His job was to cut and paste responses from scripts his scam bosses generated.

Koorimannil and his best friend had answered an ad online for jobs encouraging tourism to Thailand. From the airport in Bangkok, however, a waiting black car sped them to the border with Myanmar, he said, and the next morning armed men escorted them across the Moei River to Tai Chang, a scam compound the US government sanctioned last year.

Koorimannil managed to sneak out a screenshot from his computer that AP and security nonprofit C4ADS used to identify the key to his productivity — a software platform called Kongtian Intelligent Customer Acquisition, or KT for short.

AP also identified a similar suite of software, called Global Social Traffic Navigation, or 007TG, described by a former scammer as a “one-stop shop” for running scams at industrial scale.

KT and 007TG are part of a thriving grey market for tech that has both legitimate and illegitimate uses and is widely exploited by scammers, according to blockchain analysis, a review of Telegram channels frequented by scammers, and interviews with scammers from three countries. 

KT and 007TG were created by for-profit businesses using AI models from leading global companies and sold to scammers — who in turn generated tens of millions of dollars in illicit profits.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT played the most prominent role, along with Google’s Gemini, though the software incorporated other AI models as well, including from Europe and China. 

Both KT and 007TG used ChatGPT and Gemini to generate automated replies, power a role-play chatbot, which scammers could use to develop convincing characters, and embed real-time translation in over 100 languages, C4ADS found. KT and 007TG software also tracked the performance of workers — to devastating effect, in Koorimannil’s case.

He was beaten for being bad at scamming people, leaving his body red and swollen with lashes, photographs show.

“When they came near my computer, my hands would shake and sweat,” Koorimannil told AP.

At night, he said, he and his best friend curled in the same narrow bunk, too frightened to sleep alone.

Blockchain analysis, done for AP/"FRONTLINE" by TRM Labs, shows how powerful these tools can be. Cryptocurrency transactions are recorded on an indelible public ledger, or blockchain, which can be analysed to show the pattern and volume of cryptocurrency transactions. 

TRM Labs found that a single crypto wallet used by 007TG received US$860,000 in payments between April 2024 and December 2025 — including transfers from at least four cryptocurrency wallets associated with known scam networks. Those scammers, in turn, raked in at least US$75 million.

Stopping AI abuses at scale is challenging because scammers often use ChatGPT the same way hundreds of millions of other people do — to translate, help write messages, create content and do basic research, according to OpenAI. 

The intimacy, financial pressure and manipulative language in romance scams, for example, may be hard to distinguish from genuine users seeking help with a divorce. And tools like KT and 007TG can have legitimate uses, especially for Chinese businesses seeking to expand overseas.

But by tracking user behaviour over time to surface patterns of deception and manipulation, OpenAI said it detects scams with 95 per centa ccuracy and takes down 100,000 scam accounts each month. The company said it has also independently disrupted service to scam networks operating from Cambodia, Myanmar and Nigeria.

Even as fraud networks exploit their technology, a growing number of people are using the same tools to fight back. 

OpenAI said people use ChatGPT millions of times a month to identify and avoid scams — up to three times more often, the company estimates, than the model is abused by scammers. OpenAI also recently collaborated with the Global Anti-Scam Alliance to launch scam.org, which helps users assess the risk they are being targeted by scammers.

Google did not respond to specific questions about AP's findings, but said the company is “committed to developing AI responsibly” and engineers its models with safety guardrails to filter out content that promotes scams. 007TG went dark in December but has since claimed to be back up and running. Neither it nor KT responded to requests for comment.

In the end, through a connection in Bahrain, Koorimannil and his friend found a broker who oversaw ransom payments for 21 Indians from their compound, he said.

They each had to pay 500,000 Indian rupees (US$5,300) for their freedom.

US ISPS PLAY OUTSIZED ROLE IN CARRYING SCAM CENTRE TRAFFIC

It took a long time for Chris Colocousis to understand the extent to which scammers around the world use American technology to prey on people like him. 

At first, all he saw was that the woman who reached out to him on Facebook had a New York phone number — not too far away from his home in Massachusetts — and said she worked at a well-known financial firm in Atlanta.

“Eliza” suggested a video call. And there she was — the same blond beauty as in her Facebook photos. She even had little bags under her eyes. She was too real not to be real.

Now Colocousis, a divorced man in his 60s, has no idea where “Eliza” really is, whether he was talking with her or with ChatGPT — and even if she’s a she. He does know that the US$400,000 he says he “invested” under Eliza’s guidance is now gone, robbing him of the secure retirement he’d spent years working for.

“You just feel like your whole world fell apart,” he said. “I’m thinking about all this time that I invested into reaching a point where I could retire at a certain age — and it’s just gone.”

Each step of a fraud is a digital signal, said John Breyault, vice-president of public policy, telecommunications and fraud at the nonprofit National Consumers League. And internet service providers are the network on which many of these services ride.

“The ISPs are in a particularly critical place in this chain,” he said.

New data shows that US internet service providers play an outsized role in scams run out of Myanmar. The AP analysed a sample of 202,013 connections made by devices at four scam compounds in Myanmar — KK Park, Tai Chang, Deko Park and a newer site near Hpakalu. One in five was routed through US internet service providers. No other non-regional country came close.

Among them were Cogent Communications, Oracle, AT&T and DigitalOcean. Companies outside the United States — including UpCloud, the Finnish cloud provider, and GlobalTeleHost, a Canadian hosting and internet infrastructure company — also used servers in the US to host high-risk traffic from scam centres, the data shows.

“They are getting paid a lot of money to route these IP addresses,” said Riley Kilmer, co-founder of Spur Intelligence Corporation, a cybersecurity company. “Right now the revenue outweighs the risk. And if you could shift that balance, the ISPs would have to act.”

Internet service providers have access to a trove of data that could be used to minimise illicit activity, but doing so requires significant investment, cybersecurity analysts say.

“The policy in much of the hosting world tends to be, we will take action after the fact,” said Dan Winchester, co-founder of Scamalytics, a fraud prevention company. “That’s not really very effective. What you need to be doing is proactively stopping fraud on your servers.”

The ad tech data was compiled by International Justice Mission between February 2025 and January 2026. This data captures a slice of activity from apps that share information with data brokers, which can reveal the location and IP address a given device is using when it goes online. 

AP then identified the companies those IP addresses had been allocated to using a database maintained by Scamalytics, which also rates IP addresses for potential fraud risk.

In many cases, scammers in Myanmar routed their internet connections through US-based cloud services to hide where they were really located before connecting to major platforms — chiefly Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, according to Kentik, a network monitoring firm in San Francisco that mapped internet traffic from a sample of data shared by AP. That makes it easier for scammers to appear to be somewhere else and slip past platform safety checks.

Meta said that kind of deliberate evasion is why collaboration — with law enforcement and across industry, including connectivity and technology companies — is key to disrupting bad actors at scale.

“Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection on our platforms and across the internet,” a spokesperson said in a statement. 

By analysing behavioral patterns of users, Meta said it has been able to disrupt millions of accounts tied to scam centres across Southeast Asia and the United Arab Emirates.

“This stuff is so pervasive,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik. “You can successfully launder connections to your heart’s content.”

One way to do that is by leasing IP addresses which can be more valuable when traffic appears to originate from a well-known provider. This profitable loophole can be exploited to evade security controls. AT&T began enforcing a change in September that tightened this loophole by requiring business customers to announce their own network identity.

“It would be great if everybody did what AT&T did,” Madory said. “They probably lost some customers out of that policy, but those were pretty bad customers.”

Colocousis said people who think scam victims like him are gullible idiots don’t understand the sophistication of criminal organisations behind online fraud.

On Jan 25, 2025, Colocousis laid out US$80,000 cash in neat rows on his table, just as the customer service representative at his crypto trading app had instructed. Eliza had told him if he just paid this last bit, he could unlock his funds and withdraw all his money.

“I will tell you that I feel a little uneasy but I know you keep telling me it’s ok,” he messaged her. She responded instantly with a string of kiss emojis.

The next morning a young man, who Colocousis said showed up in a Jeep with New York plates, trudged across a thin layer of snow to his doorstep. 

Once inside, the man — who said his name was Vincent — told Colocousis to put the stacks of US$50 and US$100 bills in a plastic shopping bag. Vincent sent a message and the money instantly appeared in the fraudulent crypto trading account Eliza had helped Colocousis open, he said.

Vincent left with a big smile and a quick, amiable wave. “See you next time,” he said. “Maybe. Okay. Bye bye.”

Colocousis believes American tech companies should do more to protect people like him. He is still so shaken that he says he sometimes has trouble leaving his house.

“The greed is -,” Colocousis searched for words. “I’m all for capitalism, but when it’s totally ruining people’s lives, people that have worked their whole life towards a goal so that they don’t have to work anymore, only to have it just ripped out of their chest — you know, something’s wrong.”

STARLINK IS TOP ISP IN MYANMAR, DATA SHOWS 

Today, Musk’s Starlink satellite service is the most widely used internet provider in Myanmar, including at known scam compounds, AP found — despite an ongoing congressional investigation, a November order from a US court to seize Starlink accounts from specific Myanmar scam compounds and announcements, in October and June, that Starlink had cut service to thousands of units around scam centres.

Senator Maggie Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat who is leading a bipartisan congressional investigation into the role Starlink and other companies play in the surging losses of scam victims in America, has pressed SpaceX for details on Starlink’s role in transnational fraud and urged the company to do more to prevent the criminal misuse of its devices. 

“We need to do more at every level to combat the scams that are plaguing Americans across the country,” she said in an email to the AP. “Given that SpaceX’s Starlink is the first choice of satellite internet technology for many scammers, cutting off scammers’ access to Starlink is a key way to prevent scams at the source.”

To be sure, Starlink has been a lifeline for schools, humanitarian groups, hospitals, media and more in Myanmar, according to Amnesty International and others. But data from the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC), the regional internet registry, indicates that scammers represent a disproportionate share of its user base.

Myanmar has become a haven for industrial-scale scam compounds, which have drafted some 300,000 people from dozens of countries, often against their will, according to the United Nations. One of those compounds is Deko Park, a conglomeration of big, blue-roofed buildings dotted with white satellite dishes near the Thai border.

Data from a sample of devices at Deko Park, provided by International Justice Mission, shows Starlink among the top internet service providers in use from Dec 10, 2025, to Jan 6, 2026, just after two regional telecom companies.

An Ethiopian engineer named Ebisa told AP he used Starlink at Deko Park from December 2024 through December 2025, when he managed to escape. He asked AP to only publish his first name because he wants to protect his privacy. 

Ebisa’s job was to collect the WhatsApp numbers of rich, vulnerable men. He said he was constantly punished — beaten, shocked, detained and forced to exercise for hours at a time — for failing to meet impossible performance goals.

One day, he said, he got fed up and tried to evade a beating. He didn’t get very far. He said the security guards at Deko Park beat him so badly he was blinded in one eye. Photographs show his eye injuries and AP spoke with an NGO who helped him seek medical care in Thailand.

“It was hard to survive,” he told AP. “Finally, God helped us out from that hell.”

Speaking from a shelter for human trafficking victims in Thailand in December, he said he wanted to get his eye fixed before going home because his mother’s health is fragile and he worried the sight of his injury might kill her.

“It’s very shameful,” he said. “If God helps me, if I get medication, maybe I can get back my eye.”

He told AP on Monday from his home in Ethiopia that doctors had informed him they could not save his eye. “It's been a tough reality to face,” he said. “They told me that it's too late to bring back my sight.”

A Nigerian who was also tricked into working at Deko Park, Obinna Okeadu, never made it back home, according to three co-workers, a human rights activist and reports from his family back in Nigeria.

On the afternoon of Oct 28, 2025, Okeadu and his roommate, Ogbonnaya Tochukwu Agwu — known as Valentine — came off an unsuccessful overnight shift and were called out for punishment.

Back in their dorm room after the beating, Valentine watched as Okeadu began to tremble uncontrollably. Okeadu slid to the ground with a thud, his head lolling strangely, with sharp, anguished sounds rising from his body.

“It’s okay,” a friend told him softly. “We’re here.”

But Okeadu was not okay.

“I’m going to die like this,” Okeadu called out, according to Valentine.

Valentine said Okeadu was taken away — presumably to a hospital. He prayed for his friend. But the next day, Okeadu’s computer disappeared and his name was deleted from work chats.

Valentine never saw him again.

This kind of abuse — and the swelling cost of cyberscams to victims around the world — has led to periodic crackdowns. In early 2025, Thailand temporarily cut off internet connectivity, electricity and gas supplies to scam compounds just over its border with Myanmar.

Starlink was a way around the blockade at the time. Satellite dishes proliferated on the rooftops of scam centers in Myanmar, satellite imagery showed, and Starlink usage in Myanmar surged, according to APNIC data.

In April 2025, as the United States prepared sanctions against foreign scam networks in Southeast Asia, SpaceX reassigned IP addresses from Tanzania to create a dedicated block for Myanmar. It’s not clear why, but experts say that step is usually taken to serve growing demand or prepare for entry into a new market.

By June 2025, Starlink was the number one internet service provider in the impoverished, war-torn country, with a 14 per cent share of the market — despite its relatively high cost, according to APNIC data.

In October, amid another sweeping crackdown, Starlink said it cut services to more than 2,500 units near scam compounds in Myanmar. It lost nearly half of its users in the country and its market share plunged from 15 per cent to 6.5 per cent, according to APNIC data.

But in December, Starlink use surged back, and by February, the company was again number one in Myanmar. Today it has a nearly 20 per cent share of the market, APNIC data show.

SpaceX’s October service cuts demonstrated that the company can sever scam centers from its satellites when it wants to — and shows just how important the criminal networks that pay for scam center infrastructure have been to its user base.

According to Starlink’s own coverage map, it does not sell services in Myanmar. AP asked Myanmar’s ruling military government whether Starlink was legally authorised to work in the country but got no response.

Starlink also declined to respond to detailed requests for comment. But in public comments, Lauren Dreyer, vice-president of Starlink business operations at SpaceX, has said that Starlink has “zero tolerance” for abuse.

“We proactively detect and disable terminals involved in illegal activity,” she said in a June statement about the company’s work with the Scam Center Strike Force. “Through collaboration with law enforcement and technology companies, we advance global anti-scam efforts and ensure Starlink remains a force for good.”

Yet Starlink’s service cuts have not stopped scammers — not even from one of the most high-profile scam compounds in Asia, KK Park.

In October, in response to growing international pressure, Myanmar’s military government began demolishing the compound and broadcast images of dozens of seized Starlink terminals. But when the scammers scattered, they brought their tech with them.

By January, at least seven devices used at KK Park had migrated to a new compound some 30km to the northwest, near Hpakalu, according to International Justice Mission, which tracked the devices using ad tech data.

“These new compounds are showing up in the middle of nowhere and they’re walled multi-building complexes with a bunch of these terminals on the roof,” said Eric Heintz, a global analyst at IJM. “You should be able to shut them down, and there should be a paper trail for who’s paying the subscriptions for them.”

Heintz has identified at least 25 new sites in Myanmar that have appeared or grown significantly since the crackdown last fall. Satellite imagery, verified by AP, shows empty fields transformed into industrial-scale office parks in just a few months and new roads cut through thick trees.

White satellite dishes dot the rooftops of some of them, and geolocated device data shows that scammers from at least 13 are logging on just as they did before: With Starlink.

HONG KONG: Hong Kong’s prison service has pulled a controversial anti-drug ad featuring AI-generated K-pop stars following online reaction and ridicule.

Titled “Obsession: The Sugar-Coated Trap”, the one-minute video featured four female group members named Weedy, Icy, Coke and Little E - representing cannabis, ice, cocaine and etomidate - a strictly regulated anaesthetic agent used in hospitals to induce sedation and also found in vapes.

“If you take me, I'll give you an out of body experience,” Icy told viewers.

Weedy said: “With a romantic puff of smoke, only one stick will help you forget all worries so chill!”

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After dancing and introducing themselves on stage, the K-pop stars transform into four old men locked behind bars - before ending with a slogan: “Drugs are extremely harmful and can ruin a life.”

“No matter how pretty they're packaged, drugs are drugs. (They'll) harm your body and ruin your life.”

The video was meant to warn the public about the dangers of drug abuse, Hong Kong’s Correctional Services Department (CSD) said in a statement shared on Facebook on Saturday (Jun 27).

Arrests for drug offences in Hong Kong rose by nearly 30 per cent year on year, according to official statistics - with the number of suspects under 21 surging by 90 per cent, largely driven by the spread of etomidate.

The city also recorded 1,281 serious drug cases in 2025, a 15 per cent increase from the previous year.

ANTI-DRUG MESSAGE BACKFIRES

The video was first posted on Jun 26 but was removed after it was widely mocked online.

“After listening to their introductions, I want to try (taking drugs),” said a Threads user by the handle mmmmmkit12.

Another user, an_chai, said that the video felt more like a promotion for trying drugs. “They listed out (drug) names, and how good they feel.”  

“(We) took netizens’ opinions on the way the anti-drug video was presented very seriously and immediately re-edited the video to explain the harm of drugs as much as possible to avoid misunderstandings,”  a department spokesperson told the South China Morning Post.

The re-edited version has also since been removed from CSD’s official social media accounts.

“The original intention was to hope people would not be deceived by the lies and false promises surrounding drugs,” CSD said in a statement on Facebook on Jun 27, which “acknowledged shortcomings” and also thanked members of the public for their feedback.

Months earlier in March, Hong Kong’s Security Bureau apologised for an advertising blunder in another anti-drug campaign, which appeared to encourage the use of illegal substances when viewed from certain angles.

Edited versions of CSD’s ad continue to circulate on sites like Facebook and Instagram - with one post drawing 3,300 likes and over 10,000 shares on Threads.