Major Banks Alert on AI Chatbots Raising Scam Risks

WHO:

Techmeme - Six major banks, including Bank of America (BOA) and Capital One, are involved in the warning about AI chatbots.

WHAT:

Fast Company - Bad bot traffic is growing 9 times faster than human web traffic, with malicious bots increasing by 124% from July 2025 to June of the current year.

Fast Company - Scraping of sites increased more than 185%, and bots were used for scalping activity at nearly three times the pace of the previous year.

Fast Company - DataDome detected 52.7 billion crawler requests from AI agents and LLMs, with over 46% coming from Meta-affiliated systems and nearly 35% from OpenAI.

Fast Company - Only 2.4% of sites were fully protected against the 10 bot types included in the study, a decrease from 8.4% in 2024.

Techmeme - The banks warn that increased autonomy for agentic commerce chatbots could lead to more scams, fraud, and disputes.

Mashable - Financial institutions express concerns about AI agents making purchases on behalf of users.

WHY:

Techmeme - The banks believe that the rise of agentic commerce could increase the amount of scams, fraud, and disputes.

HOW:

Mashable - The concerns are centered around AI agents' capabilities to autonomously conduct transactions for users.

(UPDATED September 23, 2026 18:59 UTC)

Bad bot traffic is surging, growing nine times faster than human web traffic, with malicious bots increasing by 124% from July 2025 to June of this year. Scraping of websites has skyrocketed by more than 185%, and bots are now being used for scalping activities at nearly three times the rate of the previous year. A recent study by DataDome revealed that 52.7 billion crawler requests from AI agents and large language models were detected, with over 46% originating from Meta-affiliated systems and nearly 35% from OpenAI, while only 2.4% of sites were fully protected against the ten bot types studied, a drop from 8.4% in 2024.

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(UPDATED September 23, 2026 04:59 UTC)

Six major banks, including Bank of America and Capital One, have issued a warning regarding the potential risks associated with AI chatbots. They express concerns that the increased autonomy of these agentic commerce chatbots could lead to a rise in scams, fraud, and disputes, particularly as AI agents may make purchases on behalf of users. The banks believe that as these technologies become more prevalent, the likelihood of such issues will only increase.