FRAUDSTERS using artificial intelligence are a growing threat to South Gloucestershire Council’s finances and security, councillors have been told.
The authority is hitting back by using the technology itself to prevent attacks and scams but is “slow to keep pace with risk”, a meeting heard.
An annual counter-fraud report said a major initiative led by the government’s Cabinet Office to match suspicious activity with data held by South Gloucestershire Council found the authority had recovered a total of £479,183 in the last year.
The vast majority of the money – £437,468 – was from households with more than one adult wrongly claiming council tax single person discount.
The council’s head of internal audit and risk Justine Poulton told the audit and accounts committee in March that fraud was still a big risk for the organisation, although while the number of cases had doubled in the past six years, the average value of each one had halved.
She told the meeting: “AI-enabled fraud is becoming more prevalent, with fake identities.”
Ben Burton (Con, Frenchay & Downend) said: “The report looks at AI from a negative perspective in terms of increasing potential activity.
“More concerning is the fact that councils are slow to adopt the technology of AI to counter that threat.”
Cllr Burton asked whether the council could team up with others to invest in AI collectively to combat the danger.
Finance director Joss Convey said AI was used to look at overall information but that this was then followed up by officers on a case-by-case basis.
She said council tax and business rates collection remained ‘pretty solid’ as the team was a keen adopter of AI and data management.
By Adam Postans, Local Democracy Reporting Service