Google Sues Chinese Threat Group Using Gemini AI in Phishing Scams
Google is suing a Chinese threat group that is using the hyperscaler’s Gemini AI platform to run a massive phishing campaigns that has scammed hundreds of thousands of victims and stolen millions of dollars, marking the latest example of a giant IT and cloud vendor using the courts in efforts to shut down cybercrime operations.
In a blog post announcing the lawsuit, Google General Counsel Halimah Delaine Prado wrote that the lawsuit also is part of a larger, multi-prong initiative by the company to address the growing AI-powered cyberthreats that also includes working with law enforcement agencies like the FBI and other tech vendors to address the problem and supporting bipartisan bills aimed at stopping such crimes.
“We’re filing a lawsuit to dismantle their infrastructure, coordinating with the FBI who will be taking law enforcement actions, and will continue to work with AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon to block these texts before they reach you,” Prado wrote. “Litigation alone won’t end this. So Google is also advocating for federal legislation to make these protections permanent.”
According to Google, the threat group – known as “Outsider Enterprise” – used AI to develop phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) kits and operates via the Telegram messaging app, allowing even low-skilled bad actors to launch large-scale, complex phishing campaigns.
Fake Packages, Bank Messages
In this case, the scams included fake alerts about packages, bank warnings, and messages about compromised accounts, all aimed at stealing victims’ passwords and credit card numbers.
The texts are made to look like they’re coming from Google and other organizations like the U.S. Postal Service and financial services institutions.
Along with the huge numbers of victims and amount stolen, phishing campaigns linked to Outsider Enterprise created 9,000 fake websites and more than a million fraudulent URLs.
To get a gauge of the size and speed of the scams, Prado wrote that during a two-week period in May, 55,000 spam texts flagged by Android users – more than two text spam complaints a minute – and 2.5 million sent messages linked to the threat group and sent to Android users that contained links websites generated by Outsider Enterprise.
Using AI for Fraud
“The criminals behind the Outsider Enterprise built a business out of impersonating trusted brands to defraud hundreds of thousands of victims,” Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, said in a statement. “Criminals increasingly use AI to make fraud like this more convincing and harder to detect.”
Along with working with the FBI, T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T, Google is also throwing its support behind a range of proposed legislation to address AI-powered cyberthreats, including the National Strategy for Combatting Scams Act, STOP Scams Against Seniors Act, AI Plan Act, and Stopping Cross-Border Attacks and Manipulation Act.
See You in Court
Large cloud and AI vendors, such as Microsoft, are increasingly turning to the courts to help battle against threat actors. The latest lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, isn’t the first time Google has sued bad actors abusing its technology. The company in November 2025 filed a similar suit against a Chinese-based group using a PhaaS kit dubbed “Lighthouse” to run a SMS phishing – or smishing – operation.
Google’s lawsuit against Outsider Enterprise is the first against a threat group for using its AI technology in their operations. Cybercriminals latched on early to OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot after it was announced in November 2022, quickly using it to create more convincing phishing messages through improved grammar and syntax.
AI and Cybercrime
They’ve since quickly adopted new AI technology innovations. In its Internet Crime Report last year, the FBI noted the use of AI by bad actors in such threats as business email compromise (BEC), confidence and romance scams, fake employment campaigns, and investment scams.
“AI technology enables the creation of convincing synthetic content, such as social media profiles and personalized conversations, often in mass quantities,” the FBI wrote in the report. “People have manipulated video and audio similarly for decades, but the widespread availability of this developing technology makes it possible to create high-quality content.”
The FBI reported that more than 22,000 complaints involving AI-related information, with losses from these hitting more than $893 million.
