Artificial intelligence (AI) is driving an explosion in travel fraud, Booking.com warned on Thursday. The company’s head of internet security, Marnie Wilking, said there had been a 500 to 900% increase in travel-related fraud over the past 18 months.

As he explained, there has been a particularly significant increase in phishing scams – where people are tricked into revealing their personal financial information – since AI tools like ChatGPT hit the market.

“Obviously we’ve had phishing scams since email started, but there’s been a sharp upward trend since ChatGPT started,” added Marnie Wilking.

As reported by the BBC, scammers are sure to use AI in the emails they create. Phishing attacks very often convince many people to divulge their credit card details via fake but very often real links on the internet.

They also seem to be targeting sites like Booking.com or Airbnb. Once an interested party pays for their stay, the scammers either disappear without a trace – leaving their victims homeless at the same time – or sometimes try to extort even larger sums by sending new messages.

These types of scams have been known for decades, and sometimes spelling and grammar mistakes are obvious signs that it’s a scam.

However, as Marnie Wilking pointed out, speaking at a technology conference in Toronto, Artificial Intelligence is making it increasingly difficult to detect fraud as it can reproduce realistic images and much more correct texts and even in multiple languages.

Wilking recommends that both hotels and travelers use two-factor authentication, such as a mobile code, which she calls “the best way to combat phishing and identity theft,” she says. It even recommends paying particular attention to the links one chooses to click.

But in addition to criticizing AI for “helping” fraudsters, he also mentioned how the technology allows Booking.com to quickly remove fake hotel accounts that attempt to defraud the public through its platform.

“We have built AI models to detect fake accounts and either block them or ‘take them down’ before any transaction takes place,” he said.