Technology

The fact that workers with expense accounts still feel they're getting paid so little that they deserve to commit fraud says something about that stratum of employee.

Businesses are increasingly being deceived by employees using artificial intelligence for an age-old scam: faking expense receipts.

The launch of new image-generation models by top AI groups such as OpenAI and Google in recent months has sparked an influx of AI-generated receipts submitted internally within companies, according to leading expense software platforms.

Software provider AppZen said fake AI receipts accounted for about 14 percent of fraudulent documents submitted in September, compared with none last year. Fintech group Ramp said its new software flagged more than $1 million in fraudulent invoices within 90 days.

About 30 percent of US and UK financial professionals surveyed by expense management platform Medius reported they had seen a rise in falsified receipts following the launch of OpenAI’s GPT-4o last year.