Recently, Australian AI startup Apate has gained widespread attention, earning the nickname "the strictest father in northern Myanmar" from Chinese netizens.
Reportedly, the company originated from Macquarie University's Cyber Security Lab. It is a small team of only 20 employees but has raised nearly $10 million in funding.
Unlike traditional anti-fraud strategies that rely on passive defense like "blocking numbers and links," Apate takes a proactive approach by deploying massive virtual honeypots. Currently, it has released 350,000 AI agents specifically designed to engage and counter telecom fraud gangs.
These AI agents can impersonate ordinary people of various ages, accents, and languages, answering scam calls, replying to phishing texts, infiltrating scam social groups, feigning interest in the scammers' pitches, prolonging conversations, and tying up the fraudsters.
The core objectives of this solution are twofold: first, to significantly consume scammers' manpower and call time, preventing them from contacting real victims; second, to quietly gather intelligence during conversations, capturing clues such as fraudulent accounts, crypto wallet addresses, malicious URLs, and money laundering channels, which are then shared with banks, telecom operators, and regulatory bodies for blocking.
According to official data, these agents have completed over 2.5 million conversations with scammers, cumulatively occupying 17 years of scamming time, and collected 250,000 pieces of fraud-related intelligence.
Australian telecom operator TPG has redirected nearly 590,000 scam calls to this AI system. After partnering banks adopted the solution, fraud-related losses dropped by up to 76%, successfully disrupting multiple ongoing transfer scams.
Interestingly, the project originated from the founder's personal experience: after receiving a scam call, he deliberately chatted with the scammer for over 40 minutes, realizing that "occupying scammers' time is itself a form of anti-fraud." This insight sparked the idea of using AI agents for anti-fraud purposes.