Tackling AI-driven crime: The prosecutors’ response – Opinion

From deepfakes powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to crypto-fuelled money laundering, criminals are finding faster, smarter and harder-to-detect ways to commit crimes. This surge in AI-enabled crime poses urgent new challenges for prosecutors worldwide.

A recent report by Interpol on Human Trafficking-Fuelled Scam Centres, noted that the use of AI has been observed in a growing number of scam cases globally, many of which originate from online scam centres in South-east Asia. The report revealed that AI was used to generate convincing fake job ads to attract human trafficking victims as well as online photos or profiles through “deepfake” technology for sextortion and romance scams.

In Singapore, the Singapore Police Force’s Annual Scams and Cybercrime Brief noted that there have been more than 51,500 reports of scam cases in 2024, with losses of at least $1.1 billion. The main types of scam cases encountered involved e-commerce, job, phishing and investment scams, with the volume and effectiveness of these scams likely being enhanced by AI tools.

What we are seeing in Singapore is part of a wider global shift: scams are no longer simple confidence tricks, but increasingly AI-enabled, borderless operations. AI has made crimes more sophisticated and harder to detect. It has also helped criminals overcome language barriers and transcend international borders.

From the prosecution’s perspective, crime fuelled by AI poses several challenges. One, clearly, is the issue of attribution.

AI-powered cyberattacks (for example, automated phishing, malware generation, deepfake voice scams) have made it harder for prosecutors to attribute actions to a specific accused person. This makes it a challenge for prosecutors to prove beyond reasonable doubt who actually ran the AI tool that committed the offence.

There is also the problem of scale. Generative AI easily allows the creation of sexually explicit deepfake images, including of children or young persons. This enables large-scale generation of child sexual abuse material, which can even be used for “sextortion”. Generative AI in the hands of children and youth also lowers the barriers for offences to be perpetrated, such as the circulation of deep-faked photos or videos of fellow minors in compromising or sexually explicit positions. In line with international trends, our prosecutors are also seeing more cases involving AI-generated offending materials.

Yet another challenge involves legal inaccuracies and hallucination. For example, self-represented persons using generative AI. While this is sometimes beneficial in helping them articulate their case better, it often leads to the insertion of legal and factual inaccuracies due to AI hallucination as well as citing foreign or non-existent legal provisions or cases.

Dealing with the challenge

If the criminals are using technology, then we must use it too, to fight back. In the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC), we are equipping our prosecutors with both the technical tools and the psychological support they need to thrive. We are developing AI tools for selected tasks, so that our prosecutors can draft, research and review documents more efficiently. To ensure officers are better prepared to meet these evolving challenges, AGC organises courses on generative AI and prompt engineering. Our prosecutors also attend external programmes on AI and its associated legal and regulatory issues to keep them aware of the latest developments.

When prosecuting offences involving large amounts of digital child sexual abuse material, recognition software assists our investigators in the preliminary classification and identification of sexually explicit material for prosecution. This reduces the time spent sifting through thousands of photos and videos, greatly increasing the efficiency of the prosecutorial process.

Fighting technology-powered crime also, increasingly, requires teamwork. The cross-border nature of these offences and the speed at which the criminals evolve their tactics and the sheer volume of cases means that countries can no longer tackle these challenges alone. It will demand stronger cooperation – not only across borders, but also between prosecutors, law enforcement, regulators and industry – as seen in Singapore’s multi-agency and international efforts to disrupt crime syndicates and recover funds.

Updated laws also play their part. We have seen other countries taking action to actively tackle AI-powered offences. In the US, the Take It Down Act (2025) criminalises non-consensual deepfake pornography and requires platforms to remove flagged content within 48 hours. China’s Deep Synthesis Provisions (2023) oblige providers to verify users, label AI content and remove unauthorised deepfakes, with non-compliance risking heavy penalties.

Prosecutors are also using AI tools directly: the US Department of Justice employs machine learning in forensic analysis and drug profiling, while Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police deploys AI to scan devices for child exploitation material – technology similar to Singapore’s own approach.

These individual efforts, while important, underscore the need for coordinated global action. Between Sept 7 and Sept 10, the AGC hosted more than 450 prosecutors from 90 countries — including about 50 heads of prosecution agencies – in Singapore for the 30th International Association of Prosecutors (IAP) Annual Conference.

The IAP was established in June 1995 at the United Nations Office in Vienna, Austria, and is the first worldwide organisation of prosecutors. Its conferences enable prosecutors to share experiences, build trust and foster cooperation in cross-border cases. The 2025 theme, “The Versatile Prosecutor and the Administration of Criminal Justice”, is a timely call to action. In a world where offenders harness AI, exploit encrypted communications, and move illicit gains across borders with just a few clicks, it is imperative that prosecutors stay ahead of the curve to uphold the rule of law and safeguard our societies.

Combating these crimes requires not just legal expertise, but a new kind of versatility – technological fluency, cross-border agility and a readiness to operate in unfamiliar terrain. The question is no longer if we can adapt, but how fast and how well we can do it together.

The writer is the Attorney-General of Singapore.

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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