Part 4: Recognising AI-Generated Content
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Part 4: Recognising AI-Generated Content
You will receive AI-generated content — emails, reports, proposals, messages. Some will be benign. Some will be phishing. The old grammar-based detection is gone. Here is what still works.
Check the context, not the text. Does this message make sense given the relationship and recent history? A perfectly-written email from a contact who normally writes in short informal messages is a signal. The writing quality tells you little. The appropriateness to the relationship tells you more.
Look for the urgency pattern. Artificial urgency — “you must act within the hour,” “this cannot wait until Monday,” “I cannot be reached by phone right now” — is the most consistent red flag in social engineering attacks whether AI-generated or not. Urgency prevents verification.
Verify through a channel you initiated. If an email, message, or even a phone call contains an unusual request, verify by contacting the supposed sender through a channel you already have and trust. Call the phone number from your own contacts. Send a separate email. Visit in person. Do not reply to the original message and do not use contact details provided in it.
For financial requests specifically: Any financial request that arrives outside your normal process — regardless of how credible the sender seems, regardless of a video call you just had — requires verification through a second independent channel. This is the single most protective habit in this checklist. The Arup employee authorised $25.6 million through a process that skipped this step.