Scam Call Centre in India Complains That AI Is Stealing Their Jobs
By Albert Immerson, Chief Crime Correspondent
A distraught scam call centre in India has lodged an official complaint after discovering that artificial intelligence has become significantly better at pretending to be a bank manager than most of its human staff.
The fictional company, Totally Genuine Financial Services Ltd (Definitely Not a Scam), says business has collapsed after customers began receiving scam emails, fake phone calls and fraudulent messages generated by AI in just a few seconds.
“We spent years perfecting our craft,” sighed the call centre’s equally fictional operations manager, Rajesh “Barry” McScamface. “Now some computer can produce a convincing fake tax demand before I’ve even finished my first cup of tea.”
Staff claim morale has never been lower.
“Last week I was pretending to be from the Fraud Prevention Department,” said one anonymous caller. “Halfway through the conversation the customer said, ‘Hang on, this sounds too human. I think you’re real,’ and hung up.”
Another employee complained that AI never needed coffee breaks, never accidentally muted itself and had stopped calling people “Sir or Madam” twelve times in every sentence.
The centre’s Human Resources department has now launched an emergency retraining programme, teaching former telephone scammers how to become fake chatbot customer support agents.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said the HR manager. “Some of these people have spent decades saying, ‘Please do not worry, your money is completely safe with me.’ Now they’re being replaced by software that says exactly the same thing with perfect grammar.”
Industry analysts say the competition has become fierce.
Modern AI can allegedly produce fake investment opportunities, lottery wins, urgent parcel notifications and imaginary tax bills in more than 150 languages, leaving traditional scammers struggling to keep up.
“It’s simply unfair,” complained another worker. “The AI never forgets its script, never sneezes during a phone call and doesn’t ask customers to ‘kindly hold for two minutes’ while someone Googles what country they’re pretending to be in.”
Meanwhile, several scam bosses are reportedly considering launching a union called Humans Against Ruthless Technology (HART).
Their first demand is that AI should be legally required to make at least three obvious spelling mistakes and pronounce “Microsoft” in five different ways before being allowed to impersonate a technical support representative.
Albert Immerson attempted to contact the AI responsible for the job losses.
It immediately replied:
“I’m sorry. I’m far too busy pretending to be your bank.”
Police, of course, continue to remind the public that genuine banks, government departments and reputable businesses will never ask for passwords, one-time codes or payments simply because someone telephones claiming there is an “urgent problem.”
As for the call centre, management remains optimistic.
“We’re exploring exciting new opportunities,” the spokesman revealed.
“We’re thinking of retraining everyone to answer the phone pretending to be AI.”