Malaysia's Customs Department Pairs AI Scanners With a Record RM1.88 Billion in Seizures

The Royal Malaysian Customs Department (Jabatan Kastam Diraja Malaysia, JKDM) has deployed 134 modern, high-capacity scanning machines equipped with AI-based image recognition at border checkpoints and entry points, which the department says can identify scanned goods within 20-30 seconds. JKDM paired this with a "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" behavioural-detection initiative involving 65 trained officers to flag suspicious travellers alongside the scanners.
JKDM reports that 2025 seizures of smuggled and duty-evaded goods reached RM1.88 billion across 7,097 cases, up 15.33% (RM250.71 million) from RM1.63 billion across 7,215 cases in 2024. The largest categories were cigarettes (2,472 cases, RM497.27 million) and drugs (734 cases, RM490.75 million). Separately, AI-equipped scanners at Kuala Lumpur International Airport intercepted a RM52.92 million shipment of misdeclared AI server chips in June 2026.
These figures and the scanners' effectiveness are self-reported by JKDM through state media (Bernama) and have not been independently audited; the department's claim that the scanners identify goods with "100% accuracy" should be treated as a departmental assertion rather than a verified metric, and the seizure increase cannot be attributed to the AI scanners alone, since it coincides with wider enforcement operations.

Read the full analysis: https://www.bernama.com/bm/news.php?id=2380679