Big retail sales events like Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day, always result in a returns wave for Distributors and MSPs.
Forter, which works with nearly one million merchants and reviews half a trillion (US$500bn) in global online transactions every year, saw a 15% rise in returns abuse over the last six months of 2025. A key driver is the growing use of AI tools to create fake or heavily edited images that are then submitted as “proof” of damage or faults.
Ends Users Find It Easier to Return Goods
What used to be a fairly manual and limited behaviour is now easier to scale. With simple AI tools, it is possible to generate convincing photos, receipts, and other supporting evidence in seconds, which is changing the pressure retailers face in managing returns fairly and consistently.
End Users Find It Easier to Scale Purchases
This is happening at the same time as shopping itself is becoming more automated, with AI agents increasingly acting on behalf of consumers, and thus retailers are not only dealing with human customers, but also with automated activity that can behave in very human-like ways.
Forter CEO Michael Reitblat warns, “Generative AI has created a new class of refund and returns scams where the ‘evidence’ itself is manufactured. AI can now be used to produce doctored photos and videos of supposedly damaged or spoiled goods, fake receipts and even fabricated chat transcripts to trigger fraudulent refunds.” Reitblat continues:
“You don’t need to be a sophisticated criminal to do this. Off the shelf tools and even ‘fraud as a service’ offerings lower the bar so that almost anyone can generate convincing images, documents or scripts for a claim. AI has democratised fraud: it makes abuse easier, faster and more scalable, especially in channels, like returns and refunds, that were already relying on screenshots, emails and photos as proof.”
AI is fundamentally changing digital commerce, reshaping everything from the customer experience to operations to the tactics used by bad actors. Forter reported last month that it had seen a 2,107% surge in agentic activity in its network in the prior 180 days and a 202% increase in automated fraud attempts over the last year.
