Artificial intelligence and deepfake technologies enable highly sophisticated social engineering schemes, including romance scams, pig-butchering scams, and spoofed phone calls mimicking familiar voices

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In July 2025, an international coalition of 11 government agencies warned that Democratic People's Republic of Korea cyber operatives were deploying real-time deepfake videos during live remote job interviews

According to TRM Labs, artificial-intelligence-involved scams increased 13-fold between 2022 and 2024

In August 2024, TRM Labs published an AI and Crime Adoption Index indicating criminal artificial intelligence adoption increased approximately 40 percent year over year

In 2026, ransomware attacks emerged that execute end-to-end without human intervention

Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Sløk warned that autonomous AI agents automatically sweeping cash from accounts could trigger a bank run

Morgan Stanley blocks external autonomous artificial intelligence agents from accessing client accounts

JPMorgan Chase restricted autonomous artificial intelligence agents from accessing customer accounts after detecting unauthorized automated transactions

Charles Schwab blocked automated artificial intelligence agents, including the Muse agent, from accessing customer investment accounts

Wells Fargo instituted operational restrictions on artificial intelligence agents accessing customer financial accounts

OpenAI provides access to an automated cybersecurity defense program called Daybreak

Anthropic's Claude artificial intelligence models restrict users from applying automated vulnerability patches during active cyberattacks

Bank of America restricted autonomous artificial intelligence agents from accessing customer banking accounts

Two critical PHP vulnerabilities were discovered by OpenAI's 'Patch the Planet' initiative working with a California-based AI security firm using GPT-5.6

Frontier artificial intelligence labs log flagged user prompt interactions to train proprietary internal models on security vulnerabilities

Frontier AI models utilize automated post-filtering that cuts off user interactions when prompts trigger sensitive cybersecurity or biological safety boundaries

Digital asset platform Kucoin decoupled artificial intelligence decision assistance from core backend execution permissions to prevent adversarial manipulation from affecting user funds.

Security firm Certora completed a formal specification and verification of the market contract for Templar, a lending protocol deployed on NEAR Protocol, on March 30, 2026.

On October 16, 2026, NEAR Protocol announced plans to apply AI-assisted formal verification to its network protocol, core smart contracts, and developer tools using Lean.

Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden warned in June 2026 that autonomous agentic artificial intelligence systems could cause trading herding and volatility spikes in currency markets.

NEAR Protocol explained that production formal verification requires mathematically representing software, specifying required security properties, and constructing proofs that cover deployed code implementations.