On Monday, the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) released its annual Internet Crime Report, which found a 26% increase in cybercrime losses between 2024 and 2025, with a total of $20.88 billion lost in 2025.

The report, based on over a million complaints, found that cybercrime is on the rise with threat actors maintaining well-coordinated and targeted operations. Investment-related fraud and business email compromise (BEC) were two of the biggest threats last year, accounting for the majority of losses.

At the same time, the FBI found that many hackers were using AI to target victims, receiving more than 22,000 complaints related to this category with losses exceeding $893 million.

As AI tools become more advanced, the level of risk enterprises are exposed to is increasing. Now, security teams need to be prepared to protect their environments in a world where threat actors can create convincing scams at scale with just a few prompts.

How AI Is Changing Cybercrime

For cybercriminals, AI presents an opportunity to develop scams at a higher rate than ever before. “The IC3 report alerts us to a pervasive reality that we can’t afford to ignore: highly motivated threat actors know here the gaps in security exist for enterprise and family offices and are actively exploiting them at an accelerated rate,” said Dr. Chris Pierson, founder and CEO of BlackCloak, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security official said in a press release about the report.

“The rise of AI-enabled cybercrime and scams, deepfake impersonations, phishing and ransomware attacks and identity theft demonstrates the consequences of an ever-growing digital risk environment,” Pierson said.