AI has been used to defraud people through everything from calling voters to faking celebrity giveaways. Now, the US Treasury Department claims machine learning AI has played a critical part in its enhanced fraud detection processes over the past year — if a broken clock can be right twice a day, maybe AI can do something good one time?

In a new release, the Treasury states it prevented and recovered “fraud and improper payments” worth over $4 billion over the last fiscal year (October 2023 to September 2024). This number represents a tremendous increase from the previous year, which reached just $652.7 million. One-fourth of the $4 billion apparently comes from recovery by “expediting the identification of Treasury check fraud with machine learning AI.” Again, does it feel a bit like making a deal with the devil? Yes. But, such is 2024.

The $1 billion comes alongside $2.5 billion in prevention from “identifying and prioritizing high-risk transactions” and another $680 million toward additional prevention techniques.

The Treasury plans to share the technology with other federal agencies, though some have already implemented their own. The IRS, for example, has taken steps to use AI to find tax evaders, automate services and conduct audits.