Amazon warns AI scams target India’s new internet users hardest

Amazon’s global trust and safety chief said millions of first-time online shoppers from India’s tier-2 and tier-3 cities are the most vulnerable to AI-powered fraud. Rohan Oommen, vice president for customer and partner trust at Amazon, told the Times of India that the rapid influx of new digital commerce users makes India distinct from mature markets like the US, where e-commerce adoption has plateaued. “Awareness is much lower, which makes education a significant part of the solution,” Oommen said.

Generative AI has made fraud more sophisticated by enabling fake identities, forged documents and synthetic reviews, Oommen said. But it has also strengthened Amazon’s ability to detect abuse at scale. The company uses AI systems, including agentic AI for continuous audits, and relies on behavioural data to distinguish genuine sellers from bad actors. “Behaviour is much harder to fake than documents or images,” he said.

Amazon’s latest Trustworthy Shopping Experience Report says the company removed nearly 300 million fake reviews, took down about 70,000 phishing websites, and acted against around 14,000 scam-linked phone numbers globally last year. Oommen said phone-based fraud remains harder to tackle than fake websites because establishing attribution is significantly more difficult. He added that Amazon does not wait for regulation before acting against fraud.