- AI image generation can create almost anything – including fake receipts
- Fake receipts generated for expense reports cost employers
- Experts warn that this may only be the beginning of the problem
The increasing popularity of image, video and document generation tools is not surprisingly ushering in a new era of fraud for businesses and consumers alike.
New research has now claimed that businesses are seeing an increase in AI-generated fake expense receipts, which are proving incredibly difficult to spot. Expense software platform AppZen noted that these AI-generated expenses now account for 14% of fraudulent documents submitted in September 2025.
That may not sound like much, but is an increase from 0% in 2024.
Don’t trust your eyes
The findings were shared by fintech firm Ramp, which claims to have flagged over $1 million worth of fraudulent invoices in the past 90 days.
There have been enough expense scandals to know that fake expenses aren’t unheard of, but AI makes them that much more convincing — creating a lot of extra work for companies to verify them.
Receipts are not complicated documents, so forging them does not require any special skill, especially with the help of AI. So much so that human reviewers are often unable to distinguish between AI-generated receipts and real ones.
“These receipts have gotten so good that we’re telling our customers, ‘don’t trust your eyes,'” said Chris Juneau, senior vice president and head of product marketing for SAP Concur.
This naturally means another expense for the companies. Your business may soon need to implement software that scans the metadata on the submitted receipt – although even this can be removed, so there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here.
AI is now being pushed into almost every area of Western life, complicating the roles of supervisors worldwide. With millions of students even using artificial intelligence to write their papers, which in some cases cannot be tracked by software – this has created an impossible task for teachers and schools. – underlines how widespread this issue has become.
With AI becoming increasingly difficult to spot and driving a new era of fraud across all industries, it’s hard to imagine a solution that doesn’t involve most of the world going back to pen and paper or physical media simply to prove authenticity.
Via: Financial Times
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