{"id":2,"date":"2023-01-01T00:00:15","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T00:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/botornot\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2026-02-22T12:18:53","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T12:18:53","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/botornot\/","title":{"rendered":"Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Welcome to the Bot or Not? project<\/strong> – a suite of perception tests designed to find out some simple yet critically important questions important:<\/p>\r\n

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How good are humans (and AIs) at detecting AI-generated content versus human-created content?<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

Are humans (and AIs) under- or over-confident\u00a0at this task?<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

What do humans (and AIs) focus on when trying to tell the difference, and are they focussing on the right things?<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Simple beginnings<\/h2>\r\n

Our interest in this all kicked off around 2020 as the first AI-enabled crime stories began to hit the headlines. Yes, AI-enabled crime has been happening since well before the big ChatGPT watershed. In fact, we can go back to mid-July of 2019 when Cyber Security Hub journalist Alarice Rajagopal reported on a press release that, AI could escalate a new type of voice phishing cyber attack<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

Just six short weeks later, on the 30th of August, the Wall Street Journal vindicated these concerns. Catherine Stupp broke one of the first big AI-enabled cybercrime stories on fraudsters using AI to mimic a CEO\u2019s voice<\/a>. After that, the floodgates opened and the stories of generative AI heists, cons, spoofs, deepfakes, extortion, infringements and more poured in from around the world.<\/p>\r\n

These headlines inspired our first three Bot or Not?<\/strong> perception tests: the Text Edition<\/a> in 2023, the Speech Edition<\/a> in 2024, and the Music Edition<\/a> in 2025. But we haven’t stopped there because…<\/p>\r\n

Then things got complicated<\/h2>\r\n

One of the biggest cases of recent times is the Arup heist<\/a>. (This is such a spectacular example that you can listen to a whole en clair<\/em> podcast episode on it.) What stands out in this case – aside from the amount of money involved – was their decision to use emails, text messages, and then live audiovisual interaction<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\r\n

In different words, whilst “static” content like an email or a voicenote is interesting, the future of generative-AI-enabled crime is very likely to be found in its ability to convincingly interact<\/strong> with a target, from holding a casual conversation to giving C-suite-style orders to make big transfers.<\/p>\r\n

So what now?<\/h2>\r\n

That takes us to our ongoing suite of current work, which includes…<\/p>\r\n