Within days of each other, Google and OpenAI separately exposed operations allegedly originating in China that use AI for fraud and covert influence campaigns. Both target US infrastructure and political debates.
On June 12, Google filed a lawsuit against a Chinese cybercrime network called "Outsider Enterprise" in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. According to the complaint, the group used Google's AI system Gemini to target hundreds of thousands of Americans with financial fraud.
The defendants built 131 software kits that could spin up thousands of fake websites impersonating Google, YouTube, the Postal Service, and New York's E-ZPass toll system, Google said. Over a two-week stretch in May, the network sent 2.5 million messages to Android users containing links to 9,000 fake websites and more than a million fraudulent URLs. The operation was coordinated through Telegram.
Google's General Counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado said it's the first lawsuit where the company is working alongside the FBI and carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Google is seeking a restraining order that would give companies and law enforcement the legal basis to shut the network down together by seizing domains or freezing accounts, for example. Google couldn't pin down the exact damage but said it runs into the millions, according to the New York Times.
