Four in 10 U.S. employees have used artificial intelligence to generate a fake expense receipt, according to a survey released Tuesday (June 23) by expense management platform Emburse.
The survey, conducted by Atomik Research in the U.S. and U.K., found 19% of those employees fabricated a purchase that never happened, 15% inflated the value of a legitimate expense and 6% recreated a lost receipt using AI. Forty percent used company-funded AI tools to do so, according to a Tuesday press release on the survey findings.
The trend extends across the industry. Across AppZen’s enterprise platform, AI-generated receipts accounted for 0% of flagged fraudulent documents in March 2025. By mid-May 2026, that figure had reached 70.8%, based on 1,471 AI-generated fake receipts submitted by 745 employees at 174 companies and claiming a combined $148,143 in fabricated reimbursements, according to AppZen data cited by Accounting Today in a Tuesday report.
Price also sets artificial intelligence fakes apart. AI-generated fake receipts average roughly $100 each, compared to $182 for older template-based fakes, Accounting Today reported. The lower amounts appear intentional, small enough to slip under most companies’ auto-approval thresholds and through manual review without triggering scrutiny.
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