12% of successful scams in 2025 used AI or deepfakes, according to poll of U.S. adults

Artificial intelligence12% of successful scams in 2025 used AI or deepfakes, according to poll of U.S. adultsAround 15 million people were scammed out of money last year, according to the poll.Listen to this article with a free profile00:0000:00Six percent of respondents in a Gallup poll said they'd personally been scammed last year.Justine Goode / NBC News; Getty ImagesShareAdd NBC News to GoogleJune 30, 2026, 12:01 AM EDTBy Samantha ElkinsAs AI is adopted across industries, it’s also being taken up by scammers. Around 6% of U.S. adults, or around 15 million people, were scammed out of money last year, a new Gallup and Stop Scams Alliance survey finds, and victims reported that 12% of those scams involved AI or deepfakes.Limited time: Save 25% on NBC News subscriptionGet exclusive reporting, live Q&As and ad-free reading.“These guys aren’t called organized crime for nothing. They’re actually organized, and they’re using their organization to start attacking us with scale now to a tune of $68 billion, which is like the annual revenues of Delta Airlines. It’s like a Fortune 500 company. It’s huge,” Stop Scams Alliance founder and CEO Ken Westbrook told NBC News. The Stop Scams Alliance is a nonprofit organization that aims to reduce scams in the U.S.The survey of 5,173 U.S. adult respondents in January through February, which relied on participants’ self-reporting their scam experiences, said that “the use of AI may be difficult to detect by scam victims.”But Westbrook noted that the results align with other signs of the burgeoning issue of AI-fueled scams. In March, Interpol warned that AI could enhance and fuel fraud. “Enabled by artificial intelligence, low-cost digital tools and increased global criminal collaboration, we are witnessing the industrialization of fraud,” Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza said.AI companies, including OpenAI, have periodically also released reports documenting the use of their platforms by scammers. In February, OpenAI relea...