- AI image generation can create just about anything, including fake receipts
- False receipts generated for expense reports cost employers dearly
- Experts warn this could just be the start of the problem
The growing popularity of image, video and document generation tools is unsurprisingly ushering in a new era of fraud for businesses and consumers.
New research reveals that businesses are seeing an increase in fake AI-generated expense receipts, which are proving incredibly difficult to spot. Expense software platform AppZen noted that these AI-generated expenses now represent 14% of fraudulent documents submitted in September 2025.
This may not seem like much, but it is an increase from 0% in 2024.
Don’t trust your eyes
The findings are supported by financial technology company Ramp, which says it has reported fraudulent invoices worth more than $1 million in the last 90 days.
There have been enough expense scandals to know that false expenses aren’t uncommon, but AI makes them much more convincing, creating a lot of extra work for companies to verify them.
Receipts are not complicated documents, so falsifying them does not require any special skills, especially with the help of AI. So much so that human reviewers are often unable to distinguish between AI-generated receipts and real receipts.
“These receipts have gotten so good that we tell our customers, ‘Don’t trust your eyes,'” said Chris Juneau, senior vice president and head of product marketing for SAP Concur.
This of course represents an additional expense for businesses. Your business may soon need to deploy software that analyzes submitted receipt metadata – although even this can be deleted, so there’s no clear solution here.
AI is now implemented in almost every area of Western life, complicating the role of supervisors around the world. With millions of students even using AI to write their assignments, which is in some cases undetectable by software, this has created an impossible task for teachers and schools. – highlighting how widespread this problem has become.
As AI becomes increasingly difficult to spot, fueling a new era of fraud across all industries, it’s hard to envision a solution that doesn’t involve most of the world returning to pen, paper, or physical media simply to prove authenticity.
Via: Financial Times
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