Evolving Approaches to Competitor and Policy Fraud with AI - with Caitlin Hodges of Amazon

PODCAST:The AI in Business Podcast
TITLE:Evolving Approaches to Competitor and Policy Fraud with AI - with Caitlin Hodges of Amazon
DATE:2024-01-10 00:00:00
URL:
MODEL:gpt-4-gizmo


The "AI in Business" podcast episode titled "Evolving Approaches to Competitor and Policy Fraud with AI - with Caitlin Hodges of Amazon," hosted by Matthew DeMello of Emerge Technology Research, features a conversation with Caitlin Hodges, a Risk Manager at Amazon. The episode, sponsored by Riskified, explores the challenges and trends in e-commerce and retail regarding policy fraud, particularly in the context of AI's evolving role in addressing these issues.

Caitlin discusses her focus on combating competitor abuse within the retail space, where companies try to undermine each other for prominence, especially on platforms like Amazon. She highlights various fraudulent tactics, including generating negative reviews, threats, and inventory hold abuse, where competitors use bots to temporarily buy out a product's inventory, making it unavailable for actual customers.

The discussion touches upon the increasing sophistication of fraudsters who are leveraging AI and machine learning to create more legitimate-looking fake accounts and carry out fraud. Caitlin emphasizes the ongoing challenge of maintaining accuracy in AI models used to detect and prevent fraudulent activities.

One of the central themes of the podcast is the need for AI models to evolve from doing basic grunt work to becoming more proactive and accurate in identifying and preventing fraud. This evolution is crucial for managing the high volume of transactions and interactions on platforms like Amazon.

The episode also discusses the impact of seasonality on fraud, noting increased fraudulent activities around major shopping events like Prime Day and Black Friday. Caitlin suggests that future goals in fraud detection involve using AI to identify and address potential fraud proactively rather than reactively.

Overall, the podcast provides insights into the dynamic and challenging world of e-commerce fraud, the role of AI in combating it, and the ongoing efforts to improve the effectiveness of AI models in this domain.