In the News: Manjeet Rege on Generative AI Job Scams

Manjeet Rege, professor and director of the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence at the University of St. Thomas, spoke with the Minnesota Star Tribune about the growing use of artificial intelligence in employment scams targeting job seekers and businesses. Rege explained how generative AI is making fraudulent job postings, websites and impersonation attempts increasingly convincing.

From the article: “Generative AI has lowered the cost of producing a convincing fake. Even websites can be put together in a matter of minutes,” said Manjeet Rege, a University of St. Thomas professor and the director of its Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence.

“We used to always say, ‘Don’t believe until you see,’” Rege said. “Well, now I would say, don’t believe even if you see, and it looks very, very authentic.”

Rege, the St. Thomas professor, said looking for visual tells to identify AI content is a losing strategy in the long term as the common red flags like blurry logos, odd phrases and misspelling disappear. He said there is a large gap between tools designed to flag potentially problematic AI content and the rollout between new models.

“It’s a cat and mouse game,” he said. “By the time a detection method becomes reliable, the generation tools have often moved on to something it cannot catch.”