- Chatbots are filling classrooms with false students
- These chatbots are costing universities millions in fraudulent loans
- AI is feeding a great increase in identity theft
The emergence of artificial intelligence has had a transformative impact on classrooms and university campuses worldwide, but a new report by the Associated press Chatbots of claims are now going through students to collect financial aid, and are even “attending” online classes, and taking real student spaces.
The analysis of fraud reports has discovered a whopping 1.2 million fraudulent applications only in California, which leads to 223,000 presumed false inscriptions. California in particular is an objective due to the large number of community schools.
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Unrecoverable losses
However, these “ghost students” not only request a loan and expect a payment. The chatbots have been implemented in the classrooms online, where they remain “just enough time” to collect the university financial aid check.
Some teachers even report having classrooms in line with just real students, since the bots have filled the class to the registration limit.
According to the researchers, criminals stole at least $ 11 million in local, state and federal financial aid that “cannot be recovered”, only from California universities in the last year, so the problem is widespread.
This is not the first time we listen to the scams of AI that feed an increase in identity theft and fraud, with computer pirates seen ‘leveling’ their tactics, with more sophisticated attacks used at a higher frequency than ever.
Many of these scammers will use the information obtained from data violations, such as names, addresses, ages and social security numbers. With these data, they will request subsidies and loans using real credentials.
In March 2025, the Federal Student Aid Office of the Federal Student Assistance Office, and the Department’s Fraud Research Unit has lost more than 20% of its staff through dropouts and retirees since October 2025.
