Hundreds of thousands of people—teachers, cooks, students, parents—have vanished into Southeast Asia’s maze of scam compounds. Many were lured from more than 50 countries with the promise of real jobs, only to find themselves trapped in guarded complexes run by criminal syndicates. The United Nations calls the situation one of the world’s fastest-growing human trafficking crises.
Now, humanitarian workers fear a new twist—artificial intelligence (AI) may soon replace many of these trafficked workers altogether.
Tasks once done by exhausted, terrified people—crafting flirty messages, delivering emotional manipulations, maintaining contact with victims—are increasingly handled by machines.
In some compounds, AI is already writing the opening lines of conversations that pull victims into “pig butchering” scams, in which criminals build a relationship with someone before stealing their savings. Ling Li, a researcher who has interviewed dozens of survivors, says the writing is on the wall. “Time is ticking,” she warns. “Large language models may eventually replace even the subsequent steps of pig butchering scams.”
A shrinking human toll could weaken the global crackdown
For years, the world has paid attention because the victims were living, breathing people. Outrage surged after painful, public cases—like the kidnapping of Chinese actor Wang Xing in Thailand, or the South Korean tourist found murdered near a Cambodian compound. Those stories stirred governments from Asia to the U.S. into pressuring local authorities to storm compounds, free workers, and arrest traffickers.
However, if AI reduces the need for human labour, that outrage may fade, and with it, political will.
Li says that if fewer of their citizens are being trafficked, some governments and NGOs may step back, but that would make it even harder to identify who’s running these syndicates.
Human workers sometimes slip intel to rescuers. Algorithms won’t.
Others caution against assuming trafficking will disappear. Stephanie Baroud of Interpol says that when technology changes, criminal networks simply adapt. “We cannot really say that AI will end trafficking,” she says. “ It will simply reshape what we are seeing.”
Tech platforms become the new battleground
As syndicates modernise, they’re leaning heavily on private-sector tech—from stablecoins that whisk money across borders to fintech platforms that make laundering easier. Banks and crypto exchanges are trying to clean house, tightening monitoring and distancing themselves from anything that smells like a scam.
However, social media remains the biggest vulnerability.
Jacob Sims, an expert on transnational crime, says countless victims were first recruited on platforms like Facebook. Meanwhile, WhatsApp and other messaging apps have eased up on moderation, relying more on users to report misinformation rather than scanning proactively. That allows scammers to operate in the gaps.
Meta insists it is taking action. The company says that in the first half of 2025, it shut down nearly 8 million Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to scam centres and banned more than 6.8 million WhatsApp accounts. Yet experts say platforms are hesitant to adopt stricter measures because they fear wrongful bans—scammers thrive on this hesitancy.
Legitimate tech, criminal hands: The next frontier
Criminal syndicates aren’t just using software—they’re turning everyday tech into tools for organised crime. In Myanmar, an AFP investigation discovered more than 2,000 Starlink devices powering internet access inside scam compounds. SpaceX cut them off quickly, but the episode revealed how sophisticated these networks have become.
Joanne Lin of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute says this should be a wake-up call for the tech industry. Companies need clearer licensing, stronger verification, and tighter cooperation with regulators—not to punish customers, but to prevent their products from being hijacked by criminal operations.
Still, experts admit there’s only so much prevention can do. Many businesses simply don’t know who ends up using their devices or apps.
“Many commercial businesses don’t know that their products are being used by scam operations,” says researcher Hammerli Sriyai. “But their response is what matters. In other words, how would this business deal with their bad clients? I think that’s more important.”
