Americans lost close to $900 million to scams incorporating artificial intelligence in 2025, according to the first FBI report of its kind. The bureau received over 22,000 reports to its Internet Crime Complaint Center, and experts warn the problem is only set to grow as AI technology improves.
Victims include a California woman who lost more than $5,000 when a scammer used AI to impersonate her daughter's voice, and an Ohio woman who lost $1.5 million after fake FBI agents convinced her to drain her bank accounts. Michael Machtinger, deputy assistant director of the FBI Cyber Division, told the Wall Street Journal that AI-created fraudulent communications “can look very official and very legitimate to even the most trained individuals.”
Scammers are using AI for a variety of schemes, including deepfake impersonations of relatives or celebrities to solicit money, romance scams using fake images or voices, and creating fictional influencers to promote fake investments. Jake Braun, executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago, noted that as AI improves, so will the sophistication of scams. “The AI companies like to say that today’s AI is the worst AI you will ever use. What’s also true is that these are the lowest number of AI complaints we are ever going to see,” he said.
Bob Sullivan, host of the AARP podcast The Perfect Scam, described a surge in AI-generated fraud: “A couple of years ago, you might have encountered one or two AI-generated scams a year. Now scammer call centers are sending out tens of thousands of scam messages per minute.” Consumer protection agencies in California and New York have compiled lists of common AI scam methods.
The FBI report suggests that broader public education is needed, as victims span all ages and tech literacy levels. One high-profile case involved a fictional MAGA influencer, Emily Hart, created by a 22-year-old Indian nursing student using Google's Gemini AI, who admitted to making thousands from what he called the “super dumb” crowd.
