Google has taken a Chinese cybercrime operation to court, accusing it of weaponizing artificial intelligence to run a massive text-message scam targeting hundreds of thousands of people.
The group, identified in the suit as "Outsider Enterprise," allegedly used Google's own Gemini AI as part of its operation, according to TechCrunch. Over the course of just two weeks, the network sent an estimated 2.5 million fraudulent text messages — a scale that illustrates how AI can dramatically accelerate criminal campaigns that once required far more manpower.
The scam method is known as "smishing" — phishing conducted via SMS — and the lawsuit was first reported by The Hacker News. Google is seeking to hold the group legally accountable for abusing its platforms and services.
The case is significant for two reasons: it shows a major tech company using civil litigation as a direct weapon against cybercriminals, and it puts a spotlight on the growing risk that AI tools can be exploited to automate and scale deception. If AI can help a small operation blast millions of convincing scam texts in a fortnight, the implications for everyday consumers — and for the companies whose products are misused — are hard to overstate.