Consumers rarely think about trust while placing an order online, scanning a QR code, or reading product reviews. They notice it only when something goes wrong: a counterfeit product arrives at their doorstep, a payment scam wipes out savings, or a fake review influences a purchase.
That invisible nature of trust sits at the heart of a growing challenge facing the digital economy. As generative AI lowers the cost of deception and enables creating convincing product images, seller profiles, and customer reviews, online marketplace are finding themselves in an escalating contest against increasingly sophisticated bad actors and organized fraud networks.
For Kebharu Smith, who leads Amazon’s global Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU), that battle plays out every day. “Trust is hard-earned and easy to lose,” Smith said during a recent interaction on the sidelines of his India visit.
For most consumers, he noted, trust-building mechanisms are largely invisible. They do not see the billions of scans, authentication checks, seller-verification systems and investigations running in the background. They simply expect the system to work.
The AI arms race is here
The technology industry has spent the last couple of years discussing the promise and risks of AI, including the recent doomsday predictions. Less discussed though is how AI is changing the economics of fraud.
The same tools that make it easier to generate content, images, and identities also reduce the effort required to create deceptive listings, fake reviews, and fraudulent seller accounts on online marketplaces.
Smith acknowledges that AI has become a tool for both sides. On one side are bad actors seeking to exploit platforms at scale. On the other are marketplaces deploying increasingly sophisticated detection systems to identify anomalies, verify products, and connect seemingly unrelated actors.
Amazon says its systems now conduct billions of scans across products, sellers, and transactions. AI tools can compare trademarks and logos, identify suspicious behavioural patterns, and link bad actors across multiple accounts.
Amazon is hardly alone in building institutional mechanisms around trust. Globally, online marketplaces have increasingly moved beyond reactive moderation towards dedicated verification and authentication systems. eBay, for instance, operates an “Authenticity Guarantee” programme under which experts physically inspect eligible luxury goods, sneakers, watches and collectibles before they are delivered to buyers.
That company also runs a Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) programme allowing brands to report and remove listings that infringe intellectual-property rights. In India, Flipkart has spoken publicly about using machine-learning systems to detect fraudulent transactions, identify risky seller behaviour, and prevent abuse across its marketplace.
As Nikhil Pahwa, a digital policy commentator and founder of Medianama, puts it, “When AI is used to deceive, AI is also needed to audit”. He captures a reality emerging across sectors, from e-commerce and payments to social media and cybersecurity. As deceptive content becomes easier and cheaper to produce, verification and detection systems become equally critical.
Yet this does not mean technology alone can solve the problem.
Trust is becoming infrastructure
India’s digital economy has expanded rapidly over the past decade as e-commerce, digital payments, and app-based services have become deeply embedded in everyday life. That growth, however, masks a more complicated story about trust.
According to Prasanto K. Roy, a public policy advisor and former tech editor, consumer confidence has become increasingly concentrated around a handful of large platforms with strong trust and safety systems.
Roy describes the trend as a “K-shaped trust bifurcation”. What this means is that while consumers increasingly trust established platforms with reliable refund policies and grievance mechanisms, skepticism remains high towards unknown merchants, unverified social-commerce sellers, and unreliable review ecosystems.
In other words, trust is not evenly distributed.
The distinction matters because India’s digital economy continues to expand even as reports of scams, financial fraud, and counterfeit goods persist.
Roy describes digital trust as the “invisible layer” holding the ecosystem together. That trust is built through payment safeguards, return policies, customer support mechanisms, seller verification programmes, and algorithmic fraud detection. In most cases, the consumer has little understanding of these systems.
On the operational side, counterfeit investigations, account verification systems, and AI-driven monitoring are all examples of mechanisms designed to make trust scalable.
Beyond counterfeit goods
One of the more striking elements of Smith’s account is his positioning of counterfeits as something bigger than just a marketplace problem. According to him, counterfeit operations are often linked to broader criminal ecosystems involving money laundering, organized crime, and other illicit activities.
From that perspective, a counterfeit handbag listing is not simply a consumer-protection issue. It may be the visible endpoint of a much larger and more complex supply chain.
That is partly why Amazon expanded the reach of CCU into India earlier this year. The company says it is focusing on local investigative capabilities alongside partnerships with brands and law enforcement agencies.
The shift reflects a broader trend among technology platforms. Trust and safety functions, once seen as cost centers, have increasingly become a part of core business infrastructure. If users lose confidence in a marketplace, payment system or platform, the business model itself is threatened.
The regulatory push
More so than private enterprises like Amazon, regulators around the world are increasingly focused on platform accountability, algorithmic transparency and systemic risk.
The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force for major platforms in recent years, places greater responsibility on companies to assess and mitigate systemic risks, including illegal products and deceptive activity. India's regulatory approach remains different, but discussions around platform accountability, intermediary responsibility, and consumer protection increasingly overlap with global debates.
That said, trust in online marketplaces is not limited to just fraud or counterfeit goods. Increasingly, regulators are examining whether consumers can trust the information and pricing practices displayed by platforms themselves.
In India, evolving e-commerce regulations have focused on issues such as misleading discounts, sponsored listings, and search-result manipulation. New rules—as part of the amended the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules 2020—that will come into force in 2027, will require platforms to clearly distinguish paid listings from organic results, disclose a product’s “prior price” when advertising discounts, and prevent practices that could mislead consumers about rankings or savings.
Indian regulators have also sought stronger compliance around so-called dark patterns, from drip pricing to interface designs, that nudge users into decisions they may not otherwise make.
The shift signals a broader change in how policymakers think about trust. The question is whether consumers can trust the marketplace itself: the prices they see, the recommendations they receive, and the choices presented to them.
That also raises the question of accountability—how much responsibility should be borne by digital marketplace platforms like Amazon?
Pahwa argues that platforms are ideally responsible for trust and accountability, but there must remain a distinction between responsibility and liability. Platforms cannot realistically guarantee perfect outcomes, particularly in a market as large and complex as India.
He also warns against pushing too much responsibility onto platforms. If compliance burdens become excessive, operating costs rise and competition may suffer. Trust mechanisms can strengthen ecosystems, but they also require resources, control and constant oversight.
The future of trust
The internet’s next trust challenge may not be counterfeit goods or fake reviews alone. It may be a world where synthetic identities, AI-generated content, and automated fraud networks become commonplace.
The industry’s response is likely to involve more verification, more auditing, and more automation. But technology will form just one part of the answer, as trust will be shaped by governance, enforcement, and accountability systems as much as machine learning models.
For India, the stakes are particularly high. The country’s digital economy continues to grow rapidly, even as online fraud becomes more sophisticated.
Consumers may never see the systems working behind the scenes. They may never know how many counterfeit listings were removed, how many fraudulent accounts were blocked, or how many AI-driven checks occurred before a purchase was completed. And that’s job well done.
But those invisible systems increasingly determine whether digital commerce at scale functions at all. And in an age where deception is becoming easier to manufacture, trust may become the internet’s most valuable product.
Abhishek Baxi is a New Delhi-based tech writer.