Financial firms must boost protections against AI scams, UK regulator to warn

The head of the UK's financial regulator is to warn that banks, investors and insurers will have to ramp up their spending to combat scammers using artificial intelligence to commit fraud. Nikhil Rathi, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), will say that there are risks of "cyber fraud, cyber-attacks and identity fraud increasing in scale and sophistication and effectiveness" as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more widespread, in a speech in London on Wednesday. Rapid advances in the sophistication of generative AI by companies such as OpenAI and Midjourney have set companies scrambling to work out how to use the technology to improve productivity. The technology has also prompted concerns over the ease with which users can fake language, audio and video. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is hoping to make the UK a centre for the regulation of AI.