AI crimes are criminal offenses in which artificial intelligence is used as the weapon, the method of deception, or the target itself. That covers AI-written malware, deepfake video and voice fraud, non-consensual sexual imagery generated by AI, and theft of proprietary AI systems. Most of this conduct is already punishable under existing federal fraud, hacking, identity-theft, and trade-secret laws, and a 2025 statute now adds specific penalties for AI-generated intimate imagery.
AI-Powered Hacking and Malware
Generative AI has made intrusions faster and cheaper. Large language models can produce polymorphic malware that rewrites itself so conventional antivirus tools never see the same signature twice. The same tools generate spear-phishing emails tailored to a specific target by scraping social media, job history, and writing style, then producing thousands of personalized variants in minutes. AI also automates reconnaissance, scanning networks for unpatched software and generating exploit payloads with minimal human direction. The practical result is that attackers who previously lacked the skill to break into a corporate network can now do so with off-the-shelf tools.
The federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act reaches most of this conduct. Knowingly transmitting code that damages a protected computer carries up to 10 years in prison for a first offense and up to 20 years for a repeat offense. Accessing a protected computer without authorization to commit fraud can add another five years, or ten with a prior CFAA conviction.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1030 – Fraud and Related Activity in Connection With Computers The fact that an AI generated the malware does not change the statutory exposure. Prosecutors charge the human who deployed the tool.
Deepfake Fraud
Deepfakes have turned video calls and voicemails into attack surfaces. In early 2024, fraudsters used AI-generated video to impersonate senior executives of a multinational engineering firm during a live conference call, convincing an employee to wire roughly $25 million to accounts the criminals controlled. Voice cloning works the same way on a smaller scale. A few seconds of audio scraped from a conference recording or a social media post is enough to imitate a CEO, a family member, or a bank officer authorizing a transfer.
When deepfakes are used to steal money, the primary federal charge is wire fraud. The statute carries up to 20 years in prison, and if the scheme targets a financial institution, the ceiling rises to 30 years and a $1 million fine.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1343 – Fraud by Wire, Radio, or Television Prosecutors frequently stack additional charges. Using someone else’s identity in the course of a fraud triggers the aggravated identity theft statute, which adds a mandatory two-year prison term that runs consecutively after any other sentence. Courts cannot shorten the underlying fraud sentence to compensate, and probation is not an option.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1028A – Aggravated Identity Theft
The Federal Trade Commission has been active on the civil enforcement side. In September 2024 it launched Operation AI Comply, a sweep against companies using AI to facilitate deceptive practices, confirming that consumer protection law applies to AI-driven fraud with no special exemption.4Federal Trade Commission. FTC Announces Crackdown on Deceptive AI Claims and Schemes The FTC has also finalized an impersonation rule and sought comment on extending liability to AI platforms when they know their tools are being used to impersonate real people.5Federal Trade Commission. FTC Proposes New Protections to Combat AI Impersonation of Individuals
Non-Consensual Deepfake Intimate Imagery
The fastest-growing category of deepfake crime involves generating sexually explicit images or videos of real people without their consent. This is now a specific federal offense. The TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed into law on May 19, 2025, prohibits publishing non-consensual intimate imagery, whether real or AI-generated, and criminalizes threats to publish such content for intimidation, coercion, or extortion.6U.S. Congress. S.146 – TAKE IT DOWN Act
Penalties turn on the victim’s age. Publishing non-consensual intimate imagery of an adult carries up to two years in prison; offenses involving a minor carry up to three. Threatening to publish AI-generated intimate images of an adult carries up to 18 months, and threats involving a minor carry up to 30 months.7U.S. Congress. S.146 – TAKE IT DOWN Act – Full Text Violators also face mandatory restitution to their victims. Roughly 47 states have enacted their own deepfake statutes covering election manipulation, sexual exploitation, and related conduct.
The federal law also requires online platforms that host user-generated content to establish a takedown process for victims, with a 48-hour deadline to remove the content after receiving a valid notice.6U.S. Congress. S.146 – TAKE IT DOWN Act
Theft and Sabotage of AI Systems
AI systems themselves are valuable targets. The two main attack categories are data poisoning and model theft.
Data poisoning means feeding corrupt or misleading data into an AI model’s training pipeline so the model produces biased or exploitable outputs. In healthcare, a poisoned diagnostic model could misidentify diseases; in finance, it could distort risk assessments. No federal statute names data poisoning as a standalone offense, but prosecutors can reach it through the CFAA’s prohibition on unauthorized transmission of code or data that intentionally damages a protected computer, provided the elements of unauthorized access and resulting damage are met.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1030 – Fraud and Related Activity in Connection With Computers The fit is imperfect, and the law is lagging behind the technology.
Model theft is the unauthorized extraction or replication of a proprietary AI system. Attackers sometimes query a model thousands of times to reverse-engineer its internal structure, taking the intellectual property without ever touching the source code. When the stolen technology qualifies as a trade secret, the consequences are severe. In January 2026, a federal jury delivered the first AI-related conviction on economic espionage charges. A former Google software engineer was found guilty of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of trade secret theft for stealing proprietary AI infrastructure, including custom processor chip designs, the software that orchestrates thousands of chips into a training supercomputer, and specialized networking hardware.8United States Department of Justice. Former Google Engineer Found Guilty of Economic Espionage and Theft of Confidential AI Technology
Economic espionage, which requires that the theft benefit a foreign government, carries up to 15 years in prison per count and fines up to $5 million for individuals.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1831 – Economic Espionage Ordinary trade secret theft, with no foreign-government connection, carries up to 10 years per count.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1832 – Theft of Trade Secrets Organizations convicted under either statute face fines up to three times the value of the stolen technology, which for a cutting-edge AI system can reach into the billions.
Who Gets Charged When AI Commits a Crime
The hardest question in AI crime is not what happened but who is responsible. Criminal law requires a guilty mind, meaning the defendant must have acted with intent, knowledge, or at least recklessness. An AI system has none of those things. It cannot form intent or understand consequences, which creates a gap every time an autonomous system causes harm without a clear human decision behind it.
Prosecutors work around this by tracing liability to humans at two stages of the AI’s lifecycle. A developer who designs a system for an illegal purpose, or who ignores foreseeable risks during development, can face charges based on their own intent or negligence. The person or company that deploys the system is another target, particularly if they failed to supervise it, ignored warning signs, or used it in a context the developer never intended. Treating the AI itself as a legal person capable of being charged remains theoretical and controversial, largely because it would give the humans behind the system a way to deflect blame.
Voluntary regulatory standards are starting to shape what a reasonable operator looks like. The NIST AI Risk Management Framework organizes practices around governing, mapping, measuring, and managing AI risk, with a companion profile for generative AI released in 2024.11National Institute of Standards and Technology. AI Risk Management Framework The framework is not legally binding, but a company that followed it has a stronger defense against a negligence theory than one that ignored it.
How to Report an AI Crime
If you have been the victim of an AI-facilitated fraud, deepfake impersonation, or cyberattack, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center is the central intake point for federal cyber-enabled crime reports. You can file at ic3.gov even if you are unsure whether what happened qualifies as a federal offense.12Internet Crime Complaint Center. IC3 Home Page The IC3 routes complaints to the appropriate agencies and is particularly useful when the perpetrator is unknown or located overseas.
For AI-driven consumer scams and impersonation fraud, the FTC accepts complaints through its own reporting portal. The FTC does not prosecute criminal cases, but its enforcement actions under the impersonation rule and Operation AI Comply have produced civil penalties and injunctions that shut down fraudulent operations.4Federal Trade Commission. FTC Announces Crackdown on Deceptive AI Claims and Schemes If you have been targeted by non-consensual deepfake intimate imagery, the TAKE IT DOWN Act gives you the right to demand removal directly from the platform hosting the content, and the platform has 48 hours to comply once properly notified.6U.S. Congress. S.146 – TAKE IT DOWN Act