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Organizations should detect AI-assisted abuse by looking for suspicious requests, account behavior, and approval failures—not by trying to prove whether a message, voice, or image was generated by AI. Verify sensitive requests through a separate, trusted channel; strengthen authentication and monitoring; and use a prepared incident-response process if someone acts on a scam.
What AI changes—and what it does not
AI can make familiar phishing, impersonation, and fraud attempts more convincing and easier to produce at scale. The FBI says criminals use generated text for social engineering, spear phishing, and financial fraud, and generated images for fictitious profiles, false documents, and impersonation. In a May 2025 alert, the FBI described AI-generated voice messages impersonating senior U.S. officials to build rapport and seek account access. These are documented examples, not evidence that every suspicious message or synthetic image is malicious. FBI/IC3, Dec. 3, 2024; FBI/IC3, May 15, 2025.
The more durable security principle is to assess the action and the authorization, not the apparent polish of the content. Grammar, tone, caller familiarity, or an intuitive “deepfake tell” cannot serve as the core defense. The controls below remain useful whether the interaction was written or generated by AI.
How to detect suspicious requests and activity
Watch for authorization and identity anomalies
- An unexpected request for passwords, MFA codes, account recovery, or privileged access.
- A request to move the conversation to a different messaging platform, use a new contact detail, or keep the interaction unusually secret.
- Urgent payment, bank-detail, payroll, gift-card, or access changes that bypass normal approval steps.
- A help-desk or employee-impersonation request that pressures staff to override identity checks.
These signals can indicate social engineering whether or not AI was involved. The FBI describes employee impersonation, help-desk manipulation, phishing, and attempts to obtain account access in its April 11, 2024 social-engineering advisory.
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Monitor identity, account, and endpoint events
Security teams should monitor unusual or privileged logins, repeated authentication failures, suspicious credential use, unexpected account recovery or MFA changes, and endpoint alerts. Correlating those events with a reported suspicious interaction can help identify whether a deceptive request led to account misuse. The FBI recommends monitoring suspicious login attempts and privileged logins; CISA recommends endpoint detection and response (EDR). FBI/IC3; CISA, “Risk in Focus: Generative AI and Elections”.
Verify voice and video requests independently
Do not authorize a payment, account change, sensitive disclosure, or access request solely because a voice or video appears to belong to a trusted person. End the interaction and call back using a number from the organization’s directory or another separately verified source. For high-impact actions, require a second-person approval through the established process. The FBI advises independently identifying a phone number and calling to verify a purported contact in its May 15, 2025 alert.
Use email authentication, with the right expectations
Deploy and monitor SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to make it harder for attackers to spoof the organization’s email domain. External-email banners can also prompt staff to check the sender and context. These measures do not establish that a message from a legitimate but compromised account is safe, and they do not verify a voice or video. CISA identifies DMARC, SPF, and DKIM as relevant controls; the FBI recommends external email banners. CISA; FBI/IC3.
Controls that reduce the chance of compromise
Use phishing-resistant MFA
Where supported, prioritize phishing-resistant authentication such as FIDO authentication rather than relying only on methods that can be intercepted or relayed. CISA calls out FIDO authentication in its guidance. A FIDO security key is one possible implementation, but check compatibility with the organization’s identity provider, user workflows, and account-recovery process before deployment. It helps protect authentication; it does not identify AI-generated content or prevent every form of impersonation. CISA.
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Give employees, executives, finance staff, and help-desk personnel a simple, immediate way to report suspicious interactions. Train them with current examples and make clear that reporting a suspected mistake promptly is more useful than waiting to be certain. The FBI recommends immediate reporting protocols, staff education, and monitoring for suspicious logins. FBI/IC3.
Do not make a media detector the gatekeeper
The official guidance cited here does not establish a general-purpose synthetic-media detector with validated accuracy for reliably classifying all suspicious content. Do not make a detector result the deciding test for whether to pay, disclose information, grant access, or escalate an incident. Independent verification, access controls, monitoring, and a usable reporting process address the harmful action directly.
What to do after a suspected AI impersonation or phishing incident
Use the organization’s incident-response plan and adapt it to the event. NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3, finalized April 3, 2025, supersedes Rev. 2 and places incident response within broader cybersecurity risk management: Govern, Identify, and Protect support preparation; Detect, Respond, and Recover are response functions; and continuous improvement incorporates lessons learned. NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3; NIST Cybersecurity Framework.
- Report and preserve evidence. Contact the security or abuse team through the designated route. Preserve the original email or message, headers, URLs, timestamps, caller ID and callback details, screenshots, and relevant account or transaction information. Avoid casually forwarding suspicious links.
- Verify through a trusted channel. Contact the purported person or organization using known directory information or another independently obtained contact path—not details supplied in the suspicious interaction. Apply the normal out-of-band approval process for sensitive transactions. FBI/IC3, May 15, 2025.
- Contain possible account or device compromise. If credentials or codes may have been exposed, use trusted channels to secure the account. Follow the organization’s playbook to revoke sessions or tokens where appropriate, reset credentials, review MFA and recovery settings, and block malicious infrastructure. Escalate suspected endpoint or network compromise to incident responders.
- Assess the impact. Identify which accounts, systems, data, funds, customers, or public channels may be affected. Preserve evidence and record response decisions. Legal, contractual, regulatory, and law-enforcement reporting duties depend on jurisdiction and incident facts; apply the organization’s established procedures.
- Recover and communicate. Restore trusted access and monitor for follow-on activity. If the organization or an executive is being impersonated publicly, use verified communication channels. The FBI advises victims to contact account providers promptly and report incidents to IC3; organizations should also follow their internal and external reporting procedures. FBI/IC3, Dec. 3, 2024; FBI/IC3, May 15, 2025.
- Improve the controls that failed. Review how the request crossed approval or identity checks, whether staff could report it quickly, and whether authentication, email, endpoint, or payment safeguards need adjustment. NIST treats continuous improvement and lessons learned as part of incident response. NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3.
Build the process before the next suspicious request
Assign owners for triage, account containment, financial approvals, executive impersonation, evidence preservation, and communications. Make the independent verification route and second-person approvals easy to find at the moment staff need them. Then exercise the workflow with scenarios involving a spoofed email, a compromised legitimate account, and an unexpected voice or video request. The objective is not to decide whether a synthetic media item is real; it is to prevent an unverified request from becoming an unauthorized action.
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