security firm microblinks report Mapping the Rise of AI-Enabled Identity Fraud tells how it is AIs Widespread availability and ease of use have changed the way criminals commit fraud and the way security companies stop them.
Artificial intelligence has eliminated human limitations. It’s now easy to work with multiple methods, including text, audio, documents and video. This allows criminals to adopt more sophisticated approaches on previously unimaginable scales.
By 2027, fraud losses due to GenAI are estimated to reach $40 billion in the United States. 30 percent of businesses think their authentication methods are unreliable due to deepfakes. Deepfake document forgery and related AI-driven identity fraud have increased sevenfold since 2024.
While richer economies are still popular targets, AI also makes it possible to swim against the tide. This brings with it the benefits of competing against less experienced security teams and protection methods.
“In other words, the US and Canada are being targeted because they are profitable.” the report states. “Smaller countries are targeted as they may present different verification challenges.”
Criminals adapt their methods by region; Microblink’s report names three people. In Europe and Asia, attackers have improved screen-based fraud. The tools needed to participate in these activities are common.
North American attacks are more precise as fraudsters work with real documents to manipulate different parts. The aim is for them to undergo structural checks while transforming into another identity. Detection relies on capturing small inconsistencies in image integrity, layering, and data relationships. More complex documents lead to more sophisticated fraud tools.
Many other regions still fall victim to old methods that can bypass simpler checks.
“For a human reviewer or an underlying system, everything is checked.” Microblink’s report explains. “But upon further examination, these Documents are betrayed by missing depth, inconsistent light reflection, and material properties that do not match the original substrates. This illusion persists until you look at how the document behaves, not just how it looks.
“This is where deeper verification becomes important. Beneath the surface, we constantly find mismatches between what the document shows and what the underlying data claims. Barcodes, in particular, act like a silent truth serum. When encoded data does not align with visible information, it reveals a fundamental break in reality that surface-level checks miss.”
AI has also enabled fraud to progress from occurring primarily in isolated moments, such as at checkout, to evolving continuously across sessions, devices, and channels. This allows synthetic identities to mature and accounts to be compromised long after initial verification.
