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AI is helping criminals make familiar scams more personal, convincing and scalable. But the evidence does not show that targeted attacks have replaced spam: official sources describe the changing tactics without measuring a decline in spam or a rise in AI-enabled attacks over time.
Are targeted attacks replacing spam?
Not according to the available evidence. Europol and the FBI warn that generative AI can help criminals tailor messages and impersonate trusted people, but neither provides a time series showing that spam is declining as targeted attacks increase. There is also no established figure for the share of cybercrime that is AI-enabled.
The more supportable conclusion is that cybercrime tactics are broadening: attackers can use AI to personalize familiar schemes, while mass messaging and other established methods remain part of the threat landscape. The FBI’s warnings are operational guidance, not a prevalence study.
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Personalized phishing messages
AI can help produce polished messages that use personal details or fit a recipient’s cultural context. The FBI warns that AI-generated phishing can have convincing grammar and spelling; Europol’s 2025 summary of the Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA) describes criminals tailoring scam messages to victims’ personal details and cultural context. A well-written message is not proof that AI was used, but errors and awkward phrasing are no longer reliable signs of a scam.
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Voice and video impersonation
Criminals may use cloned voices or video to impersonate a relative, colleague or business partner and request sensitive information or a fraudulent payment. The FBI’s San Francisco office warned in May 2024 that attackers are leveraging AI for convincing voice or video messages and emails. As FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Tripp put it: “As technology continues to evolve, so do cybercriminals’ tactics. Attackers are leveraging AI to craft highly convincing voice or video messages and emails to enable fraud schemes against individuals and businesses alike,”
AI within a broader criminal marketplace
AI is one element in a wider ecosystem, not the sole cause of cybercrime. Europol’s 2025 IOCTA summary describes crime-as-a-service platforms offering stolen data and step-by-step fraud tutorials, while access credentials and compromised networks are sold in bulk. Such services can lower the expertise needed to take part in fraud and other crimes.
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What the published numbers do—and don’t—show
- FBI IC3: The FBI reported 859,532 complaints and losses exceeding $16 billion for 2024, in an announcement published on 23 April 2025. Phishing/spoofing, extortion and personal data breaches were the top three crimes by complaint count. These totals cover reported internet crime generally, not AI-enabled incidents; complaints are not a complete census of cybercrime.
- Microsoft: Microsoft’s 2024 Digital Defense Report says it observed more than 600 million cybercriminal and nation-state attacks per day against its customers. This is Microsoft’s telemetry from its monitored environment, not a global attack count and not a measure of AI-enabled crime.
Neither figure establishes that AI-driven attacks are displacing spam. They describe different things: reported complaints and losses in one case, and activity observed in Microsoft’s customer environment in the other.
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Because a message or call can sound familiar and look polished, verify the requested action through a separate, trusted channel—especially if it involves money, credentials or sensitive information.
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- Pause on urgency. Treat unexpected pressure to transfer money, share a password or reveal a verification code as a reason to stop and check.
- Verify independently. Contact the person or organization using a phone number or channel you already trust, not contact details supplied in the suspicious message. For a voice or video request, call back using a known number.
- Use multi-factor authentication. MFA adds a layer beyond a password, though it cannot prevent every kind of compromise.
- For businesses, pair technology with training. The FBI advises considering technical measures to reduce phishing messages and combining them with employee education. Make verification of sensitive requests part of normal procedures, rather than leaving it to an employee’s judgment under pressure.
The FBI’s core point is that AI “provides augmented and enhanced capabilities to schemes that attackers already use and increases cyber-attack speed, scale, and automation.” Defenses should therefore address the underlying requests and workflows—not depend on spotting a particular writing style or assuming every polished message was generated by AI.
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