How AI can help fight crime

The City of London’s AI Innovation Challenge will harness the power of technology to prevent and track fraud, says Chris Hayward

AI chip producer Nvidia is vying with Microsoft and Apple for the title of world’s most valuable company.

History teaches us that those who become the world’s most valuable company, be they Standard Oil, IBM, Apple, or potentially Nvidia, share one critical factor: they innovate.

How long Nvidia will compete for the top spot is uncertain – Standard Oil’s reign at the top lasted 29 years before it was broken up. But what is clear is that the product behind the chipmaker’s rise – AI – will endure, just as we’re still heavily reliant on oil today.

For many, AI vaulted into the public imagination through OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a large language model that means student essays that would take hours, AI does in seconds.

Though we think of AI as being all about machines, the goal is to improve the human experience. Here, AI’s potential and application is far wider.

In education, AI could be used to write essays, but its real impact will be in providing students with tailored learning, rather than writing answers.

In medicine, AI will help make quicker and better decisions. Better for patients and better for doctors, which is why Imperial College London declares AI ‘a real opportunity in healthcare’.

And in financial and professional services, AI can deliver better customer experiences, improve risk management for investors, and strengthen our economic security – protecting people’s money.

Take fraud as an example. Fraud is a sectoral challenge – it represents 40 per cent of all crime domestically and is a rising challenge abroad.

Think of the highly emotionally-manipulative ‘hey mum’ messages, sent by criminals asking for money. Or romance scams that dupe people. Or the emails claiming to be from your bank asking you to follow the link and confirm certain bank details, which then leads to financial harm.

As the national policing lead for fraud, economic and cyber crime, the City of London Police is instrumental in co-ordinating efforts against such threats. That means working with local police forces across the country, businesses, the financial services sector, and, crucially, victims, to strengthen our defences.

Through innovation, AI can help in the fight against criminals and enhance our economic security.

By analysing vast amounts of data quickly, AI can help spot fraudulent patterns of behaviour. This speeds up detection, but AI also improves accuracy, and allows banks to respond more swiftly and effectively to threats.

In payments and fintech, Mastercard uses AI to analyse data and see which cards may have had their details stolen. Across billions of cards globally, AI has helped double the detection rate of compromised cards, helping not only the legitimate card owner, but those they interact with financially by protecting future transactions.

Used effectively, AI has impact and helps build trust within the financial system. This is why the sector is already a leader in AI adoption, with 90 per cent of banks having dedicated resources to generative AI initiatives.

There are further steps we can take to protect customers and safeguard the system.

The City of London Corporation, in partnership with Microsoft, and supported by London & Partners, has launched the AI Innovation Challenge.

Providing a unique platform for financial services and technology companies to work together, the AI Innovation Challenge will see participants address a key security priority. They will focus on using AI to prevent online fraud at the earliest stage by identifying and tracking fake identities such as synthetic identities and image or audio deepfakes.

The application window for tech companies closes on 26th July. While the Challenge takes place from late September to early November, culminating in a public event to showcase the technology solutions developed.

Working together, the Challenge will accelerate AI solutions for financial services problems, support cross-sector collaboration and information sharing on online fraud, and develop UK leadership in counter-fraud innovation.

At a time of global insecurity, AI can help bolster our economic defences and strengthen the financial sector’s resilience and robustness.

Nvidia shows us that the price for AI technology is high, yet the opportunity of harnessing AI’s innovative potential may be even higher.

Chris Hayward is policy chairman at the City of London corporation