Fleets warned of rising AI insurance fraud risk as image quality improves

Fleet software provider FleetCheck has warned that rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have increased the risk of fraudulent insurance claims for fleets, as image generation technology becomes more sophisticated.

Neil Avent, chief technical officer at FleetCheck, said the emergence of generative adversarial networks (GANs) brought a significant improvement in the realism of AI-generated images and video.

Avent said: “There has been a real step change in the last few months.

“GANs technology, which pits two neural networks against each other to generate convincing images, is now widely available via mainstream image-generation platforms.

“It has replaced previous diffusion-style systems and produces much more realistic results.”

This leap in image quality could make it easier for individuals to exaggerate the extent of vehicle damage following an accident.

Avent added: “If an employee is involved in a collision, there is a risk that the other party could use AI to manipulate the images and exaggerate the damage – for example, by adding scratches or dents to door panels.

“One of the strengths of GANs is that it can apply such alterations consistently across multiple images.”