The trend: Gen AI tools are making it easier to carry out ecommerce fraud.

• Bad actors are increasingly using genAI tools to trick moderation teams, Nicolas Waldmann, the head of external affairs for TikTok’s global governance and experience unit, told Business Insider.
• That includes creating more convincing listings for fake or counterfeit products, as well as fabricating brands.

Implications for ecommerce platforms: The issue of AI slop is not a problem unique to TikTok Shop: YouTube, Pinterest, and Spotify are among the companies that are cracking down on misleading or low-quality AI-generated content in order to avoid degrading the user experience.

However, the stakes are higher for ecommerce marketplaces—especially for emerging ones like TikTok Shop that are still trying to win consumers’ trust. Shoppers who lose money on products that don’t exist are unlikely to become loyal customers, and widespread fraud can deter consumers from purchasing in the first place.

• TikTok, like Amazon and Walmart, relies on AI to help detect fraudulent activity alongside human moderators. Those efforts have borne fruit, the company says: In the first six months of 2025, it rejected 1.4 million seller account applications for falling short of its standards and prevented over 70 million products from being listed, a 40% increase compared with the prior six months.
• But as genAI tools become more sophisticated, TikTok will have to balance expanding the breadth of its marketplace with the need to protect consumers from the possibility of being scammed.

Our take: GenAI’s ability to facilitate fraud is a serious problem across ecommerce marketplaces. While platforms like Amazon have so far been able to keep AI slop to a minimum, that could change as tools like OpenAI’s Sora make it possible to create highly realistic assets for fake brands and products.

To maintain trust on their marketplaces and keep fraudsters at bay, companies will need to strengthen their moderation efforts—even if it comes at the expense of potential sales or expansion.