Reported by Matt Egan, CNN

Uncle Sam has quietly deployed a new secret weapon designed to catch bad guys trying to steal from taxpayers: artificial intelligence.

Starting around late 2022, the Treasury Department began using enhanced fraud-detection methods powered by AI to spot fraud, CNN has learned.

The strategy mirrors what is already being done in the private sector. Banks and payment companies are increasingly turning to AI to root out suspicious transactions — which the technology can often do with lightning speed.

Uncle Sam’s AI-fueled crackdown on fraud appears to be paying off.

Treasury’s AI-powered fraud detection recovered $375 million in fiscal 2023 alone, Treasury officials tell CNN, marking the first time Treasury is publicly acknowledging it is using AI to detect fraud.

Using these new crime-fighting strategies, the federal government can halt check fraud almost in real time, in part by looking for unusual transaction patterns, Treasury officials tell CNN. And this focus on AI has led to multiple active cases and arrests by law enforcement, Treasury said.

Treasury is not relying on generative AI, the technology powering ChatGPT and other popular tools that can create song lyrics, conjure up images and even create movie-quality videos from text prompts. Instead, Treasury officials say the type of AI they are using falls more into the bucket of machine learning and Big Data.

The goal is to move with such speed that anomalies are flagged and banks are alerted before fraudulent checks are ever cashed, Treasury officials said.

Read full report: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/02/28/business/artificial-intelligence-fraud-treasury-ai/index.html