🤖Generative AI changed the scale
The FBI created a dedicated descriptor for "AI-related" complaints in 2026 — 22,000 reports and nearly $900 million in losses in the very first year. On the voice side alone, deepfake fraud attempts rose 1,300% in 2024. AI doesn't create new scams: it lets a single scammer run hundreds at once, with unprecedented realism.
FBI (IC3, 2026) · Pindrop, 2025 Voice Intelligence and Security Report🗂️Data breaches fuel the targeting
The average global cost of a data breach reached $4.44 million in 2025 ($10.22 million in the United States, a record). Every large-scale breach puts names, phone numbers and addresses into circulation — the raw material for a scammer who personalizes their approach rather than calling at random.
IBM, Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025📡A structured industry behind spam
The European operation "SIMCARTEL" (October 2025) exposed a single SIM-farm network that made 49 million fake online accounts possible. This isn't a cottage industry anymore: it's an on-demand rental service, operating at industrial scale.
Europol & Eurojust, October 2025📞Raw volume keeps climbing
The average monthly volume of fraud and telemarketing calls rose from 2.14 billion in 2024 to 2.56 billion per month in 2025 — up 20% in a year. Losses from fraudulent calls specifically targeting people over 60 topped $4.57 billion in 2024, in the United States alone.
PIRG, Ringing in Our Fears 2025 · FBI (IC3), 2024💻Remote work blurs the usual cues
With a growing share of the workforce fully or partly remote, professional exchanges by text, video call or messaging app have become the norm — which makes a fake job offer or a fake message from a "colleague" far more credible than it was a decade ago, when those exchanges went almost exclusively through a verifiable work email.
See also the recruitment fraud reportWhat these five factors have in common
None of these changes is isolated — they reinforce each other. A data breach supplies the raw material, a SIM farm supplies the number, generative AI supplies the script and sometimes the voice, and remote work supplies a context where receiving an unexpected work message no longer surprises anyone. It's this combination, not a single factor, that explains the acceleration.
Frequently asked questions
When did scams really start exploding?
The main indicators (losses reported to the FBI, fraudulent-call volume, cost of data breaches) show continuous acceleration over several years, with a particularly sharp jump since the arrival of mainstream generative AI.
Is artificial intelligence the only factor?
No. It adds to other already-documented factors: the explosion of data breaches that feed scammers personal information, the spread of remote work, and a structured industry (SIM farms, call centers) that has professionalized fraud at scale.
Is this going to stop?
Nothing in current reports suggests a slowdown — quite the opposite, several bodies (Europol, ENISA) document growing sophistication. That's exactly why protection that keeps adapting continuously, rather than a fixed list, remains necessary.