Meet AIko: Japan’s AI police chief is taking on a US$2b scam crisis (VIDEO)

TOKYO, June 29 — Japan’s newest police chief doesn’t patrol the streets, carry a firearm or even exist in the real world.

Instead, she appears on YouTube with the face and voice of a young woman, calmly explaining why anyone claiming to be a police officer over a video call is almost certainly trying to steal your money.

Her name is AIko, and she is the Osaka Prefectural Police’s latest weapon against a fraud epidemic that drained victims of a record more than US$2 billion (RM8 billion) last year — a crisis authorities say is increasingly fuelled by social media and sophisticated criminal networks operating across South-east Asia.

Introduced in late May, AIko’s name combines the abbreviation for artificial intelligence with “ko”, a common suffix in Japanese female names. The virtual police chief fronts a series of crime prevention videos aimed at younger internet users — an audience traditional public awareness campaigns have struggled to reach.

According to Kyodo News, AIko walks viewers through real conversations between scammers and victims, warning against increasingly common schemes involving fraudsters posing as police officers, celebrity investment gurus and even romantic partners.

In one video titled Chief AIko’s Crime Prevention Class, she delivers a blunt reminder: “No police officers show their IDs and arrest warrants online.”

The message reflects how dramatically Japan’s scam landscape has evolved.

While older people remain frequent targets, preliminary police data cited by South China Morning Post show that nearly half of fraud victims in Osaka last year were aged below 65, underscoring how online scams have become an all-ages problem rather than one confined to retirees.

Behind the avatar is Toshinori Hirano, a visiting professor at Kagawa University’s Cyber Security Centre who had advised Osaka police before creating AIko.

He told Kyodo he hoped the virtual officer would “heighten crime prevention awareness by utilising technology”.

The campaign comes as Japan confronts an increasingly sophisticated fraud ecosystem. According to NHK, victims lost a record more than US$2 billion last year to investment scams, romance fraud and other confidence schemes that frequently begin on social media before moving to encrypted messaging platforms.

Police say many victims are tricked by criminals impersonating law enforcement officers during convincing video calls, complete with fake identification cards and fabricated arrest warrants.

Investigators believe many of the syndicates behind these operations are based in scam compounds across mainland South-east Asia, particularly in the border regions of Myanmar and Cambodia, where organised crime groups have built industrial-scale fraud operations targeting victims across Asia.

Japan has stepped up international cooperation in response. According to NHK, National Police Agency Organised Crime Department director-general Ohama Takeshi met Cambodian National Police deputy commissioner-general Dy Vichea and other officials last week to discuss coordinated enforcement efforts against fraud syndicates operating in Cambodia.

The two sides also discussed efforts to locate and rescue dozens of Japanese nationals believed to be missing in Cambodia. NHK reported that more than 30 Japanese nationals were arrested in the first five months of this year for allegedly participating in fraud operations across South-east Asia, prompting Japan’s National Police Agency to deploy liaison officers across the region.

AIko’s debut also comes as Japan accelerates the use of artificial intelligence across government.

The Japan Times reported that the government’s Digital Agency plans to roll out Gennai — a secure generative AI platform for around 180,000 civil servants across 39 agencies — following a large-scale pilot programme. The platform is designed to assist with drafting official documents, transcribing meetings, translating texts, conducting legal research and preparing parliamentary responses within a closed government network.

Digital Minister Hisashi Matsumoto has said he intends to use the platform himself to draft parliamentary replies, while Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has urged civil servants to embrace trustworthy AI as Japan seeks to catch up with global leaders in the technology.