Digital fraud is skyrocketing due to artificial intelligence, which is boosting criminals' ability to separate Americans from their money, new research shows.

Cyberattacks and scams have targeted nine in 10 Americans, with 17% of consumers saying they've lost money to a digital security breach, according to a new report from Consumer Reports, Aspen Digital and the Global Cyber Alliance.

AI is lowering the barrier to carrying out scams that would previously have been costly or laborious, experts told CBS News. The tech is driving more data breaches because it allows scammers to quickly synthesize information, which they use to create personalized traps, experts told CBS News.

While leading frontier labs are warning about AI's potential destructive capabilities, including the threats it might pose to all of humanity, some experts say such scenarios are unlikely to play out in the near term, if at all. But AI has already changed the nature of digital fraud, making consumers' pocketbooks more vulnerable than they've ever been, experts told CBS News.

 People have stereotypes about who gets scammed, but it is truly everyone now, and AI is just going to accelerate that,  Stacey Higginbotham, a Consumer Reports cybersecurity fellow, told CBS News.  I don't think we've seen even the beginning with the number and quality of scams reaching people. 

Consumer Reports, which polled nearly 5,000 U.S. adults in March and April, found that 90% had encountered a digital scam or cyberattack. A separate survey by the group shows that consumers are increasingly concerned about the safety of their personal data, including potential access by bad actors to their financial accounts.

 Nine in ten Americans have been targeted by a scam or cyberattack. That's not a statistic, that's almost everyone we serve,  Consumer Reports president and CEO Phil Radford said in a statement.  AI is making fraud faster, cheaper and more personal, and no one can outsmart that alone. Companies need to be held accountable. Governments need real guardrails. That's the bar we're setting - for ourselves and for them. 

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