Why aren't more people talking about the dark side of AI? For one, most of the worries are centered on job loss and plagiarism. But perhaps it's largely because it's so good that it's hard to detect. Regardless, it's clear some strategies are already in play.

What's critical to know: Even those highly attuned to scams can fall victim as generative AI more closely mimics real business experiences and enables crime syndicates to operate at scale.

This is an arms race. It will take good-guy tech fighting bad-guy tech and a coordinated human response to protect cargo from these modern cyber pirates.

Discerning real from fake is getting increasingly difficult

Crime syndicates can already evade detection and prosecution by operating outside the United States and creating new fraudulent documentation whenever they're discovered. 

With AI in play, these bad actors are orders of magnitude more effective.

"Generative AI makes fraud an infinitely scalable and near-automatic process," warns BAYNCORE senior consultant Dr. Richard Paul, who earned his PhD in computer simulation and artificial intelligence.

"Anyone can now set up an AI bot to scan the internet for key fragments of information," Paul explains. "When assembled, these simple AI tools can automatically create documents, emails, and text messages that appear legitimate."

Monitoring a freight industry awash in phishing scams, Brittany Graft, COO of fraud prevention platform Highway, shares Paul's concern.

"If we take phishing schemes, for example, we historically have been able to detect and avoid them because the English is broken, the grammar is poor, or a logo is misplaced. AI is going to help the bad guys create an experience that so closely replicates what brokers and carriers are used to," says Graft, "that the discerning eye will have a harder time picking up that it's a scam."