Microsoft reported that it thwarted $4 billion in fraud attempts between April 2024 and April 2025, amid the rise of AI in cyber scams.

This was revealed in the newest edition of the firm’s Cyber Signals, which found that Microsoft blocked 1.6 million bot signup attempts per hour.

Microsoft disclosed three modes of scams and frauds that are utilising AI to advance their effectiveness.

E-commerce Websites

AI is making it easy for cyber-criminals to commit e-commerce fraud, allowing threat actors to rapidly set up fake websites and generate seemingly genuine product descriptions, images, and customer reviews.

Without AI, fraudulent e-commerce websites would take weeks to convincingly produce. Now, AI chatbots give these fraud sites even more credibility, and can stall customers seeking remedies for complaints.

Job and Employment Fraud

Scammers are turning to AI to produce fake job listings across major recruitment platforms, using stolen credentials to create fake accounts, fake job postings, and even email campaigns to phish job seekers.

Cyber-criminals are even using AI-powered interviews and automated emails to enhance the credibility of job scams, making it even harder for job seekers to sift through fake job offers.

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Tech Support Scams

Scammers are also utilising AI to offer fake tech support to unsuspecting victims which then gives threat actors remote access to a device.

These scams typically trick victims into accepting unnecessary technical support, which then lets cyber-criminals access to all the information stored on a device or any network it is connected to, giving them the opportunity to install malware.

Even without AI, these scams prevent an elevated scam risk, Microsoft says. They found an instance of cyber gang Storm-1811 abusing Windows software, posting as IT support and using voice phishing (vishing).

This speaks to the rise of social engineering overall, which can be enhanced with AI.