AI-created content has penetrated your shopping cart on TikTok Shop. As reported by Business Insider, TikTok Shop and other ecommerce platforms, including Amazon, are encountering an AI dilemma. Fraudsters are allegedly utilizing generative AI technologies to fabricate counterfeit brands, duplicates, and products, tricking users into buying items that do not exist. “It’s organized crime, to be honest,” Nicolas Waldmann, head of TikTok Shop’s governance and experience external affairs team, told Business Insider. “They’re essentially trying to go through and sell, and of course, never deliver anything, then vanish with the money.”

This form of fraud is not unprecedented. Scammers excel at discovering methods to mislead, but AI has significantly complicated efforts to apprehend them. Amazon is employing AI to monitor scammers who leverage AI. TikTok is also using AI to thwart such harmful sellers, along with human oversight. Waldmann mentioned to Business Insider that the company utilizes “AI to effectively manage AI.” It’s a complicated loop.

In a report released on Thursday, TikTok revealed that in the initial six months of 2025, it “denied over 70 million products before they were listed, a 40 percent rise from the prior six months.” “As our seller and creator community expands globally, and our capability to identify prohibited products enhances, the quantity of violative products we avert from appearing on our platform has surged,” TikTok stated.

This is not a recent problem. In August, PC Mag reported that scammers were executing a “widespread, ongoing, malicious campaign” permitting them to steal cryptocurrency and personal information from users.