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Phys.org — Social Sciences · September 19, 2026 · On the brief until October 3, 2026

Humans or AI? Who or what can scam you more effectively?

PsychologyCybersecurityCommunications
THE AI ANGLE
Automating and scaling personalized spear-phishing messages

Brigham Young University researchers found that AI-generated spear-phishing messages deceived recipients 28% of the time compared to 21% for human-authored scams, matching or outperforming humans in generating clicks 80% of the time. The study revealed that incorporating personalized details like workplace roles and co-worker names significantly boosts credibility, while recipients correctly identified AI authorship only 52% of the time. This shift demonstrates how AI can rapidly scale highly persuasive social engineering attacks using publicly available information, undermining traditional content-based scam recognition.

Summary written by AI Business Lens with an AI model from the article at phys.org. It is not the article, and the publisher has not reviewed it. For publishers.

THE TEACHING ANGLE
Instructors can examine how psychological reliance on familiarity and interpersonal cues creates vulnerabilities that make automated, highly personalized spear-phishing difficult to detect through message content alone.

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