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by Mary Barron
The City of Port St. Lucie is warning its residents about a growing Florida trend: AI-related scams. (PSL)
Artificial intelligence is making scams harder to spot and easier to scale, and the FBI says the financial toll is climbing fast.
New numbers show Americans lost more than $20 billion to cybercrime in 2025, with AI-powered scams playing a growing role. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, more than 22,000 complaints involving AI-related scams were reported in 2025, with more than $893 million in losses.
Mason Hubber, FBI Birmingham special resident agent, said “the ever-evolving AI door is just something that changes.”
Investment scams remain the biggest threat, with more than $632 million in AI-related losses.
Scammers are also using romance scams and creating convincing online personas, including attempts to imitate family members in distress. Those scams cost victims more than $5 million last year.
“Instead of having maybe a person make these calls or start engaging with these people that are victims, now you can rely on AI to do this,” Hubber said. “You can maybe set it to contact thousands of people in a day or at one time, pushing emails, phone calls, texts, social media. So again, rather than relying on, I need you to do this. Now we have AI to do it and it's just a much broader range.”
Officials say AI-generated fake profiles, manipulated videos and realistic audio are making it more difficult to tell what is real and what is a scam.
“All of us are familiar with the emails or the texts. Look for any little things that misspellings,” Hubber said. “And AI may begin a little bit outside of what we're looking for, but just, you know who you're talking to, you know how people talk, how they communicate.”
The FBI urges people to verify calls or messages that appear to come from family members, avoid making impulsive financial decisions and report suspected scams immediately.
2026 Sinclair, Inc.
