- Chatbots fill classrooms with false students
- These chatbots cost colleges to millions of fraudulent loans
- AI feeds an enormous increase in identity theft
The rise of artificial intelligence has had a transformer impact on classrooms and university campuses around the world, but a new report of the Associated Press Convenience chatbots are now presented as students in order to collect financial assistance, and “even follow” online courses – and by taking spaces of real students.
Analysis of fraud reports revealed 1.2 million fraudulent requests in California only, which leads to 223,000 false inscriptions. California in particular is a target due to the large number of community colleges.
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Unrealizable losses
However, these “ghost students” only ask for a loan and hope for payment. Chatbots have been deployed in online classrooms, where they remain “just long enough” to collect the financial aid check with college.
Some teachers even declare that they have online classrooms with barely real students while robots have filled the class at the registration limit.
According to the researchers, criminals have stolen at least $ 11 million in local, state and federal financial assistance that cannot be recovered ”, just California colleges in the past year, so the problem is widespread.
This is not the first time that we have heard about scams in AI fueling an increase in identity and fraud, hackers have seen their tactics “ tactics, with more sophisticated attacks to draw a higher frequency than ever.
Many of these crooks will use information obtained from data violations, such as names, addresses, ages and social security numbers. With this data, they will apply to subsidies and loans using real references.
In March 2025, more than 300 people were dismissed from the Federal Student Aid Office by the Trump administration, and the ministry’s fraud in survey unit lost more than 20% of its staff by attrition and pensions since October 2025.