Artificial intelligence is amplifying the reach, speed and credibility of cybercrime — but, according to Interpol, it is not fundamentally changing the playbook.

Artificial intelligence is giving criminals a more efficient way to commit familiar offenses such as scams and fraud, rather than creating an entirely new category of threat, according to Interpol.

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Evolution, Not Revolution

AI is strengthening existing criminal techniques instead of replacing them, Bjorn R. Watne, Interpol’s global chief information security officer, told CNBC on the sidelines of Tech Week Singapore on Thursday.

Scam operators can now use AI to reach more victims at once, while advances in translation tools and digital identities are making fraudulent messages and interactions harder to distinguish from legitimate ones.

“It’s an evolution and not a revolution,” Watne said, adding that AI is primarily increasing the “speed and scale” of established tactics.

What Companies Should Protect First

As cyber threats become more sophisticated, Watne said companies should focus on protecting the assets that matter most to their operations.

That starts with identifying their “crown jewels” — the systems, data and infrastructure most critical to business continuity — and determining which adversaries would be most interested in targeting them.

From there, organizations can use threat intelligence to understand the methods and tools those actors rely on, then build defenses that are tailored to the risk.

“There is no need for everyone to try and protect against everything all at once when they’re not being targeted by it,” he said.

The right security posture, he added, depends on whether a company is facing opportunistic criminals or advanced persistent threat actors with more targeted objectives.

The Boardroom Gap In Cybersecurity

Watne also said many companies still struggle with a disconnect between executive leadership and cybersecurity strategy.

“There are still many industries where they haven’t realized that everyone today is an IT company,” he said.

Although cyber risk is rising on corporate risk registers, cybersecurity has not yet fully reached the boardroom in many organizations, Watne added.

Agentic AI Brings A New Category Of Risk

Watne said he is especially concerned about agentic AI — systems that can take actions on behalf of users — as the technology becomes more capable.

The risk, he warned, is no longer limited to an AI delivering inaccurate information. If an AI system begins making incorrect decisions or taking harmful actions in the physical world, the consequences could be far more serious.

“One thing is that an AI is feeding you the wrong information,” Watne said. “But when an AI is actually performing an action and it starts doing the wrong actions, especially in the physical domain, that can have consequences on bodily harm of humans.”

He pointed to the growing use of AI in cars and self-driving vehicles as a particularly sensitive area.

Why Trust Is The Real Vulnerability

Watne said those risks are compounded by the unusually high level of trust people place in technology compared with other sectors such as financial services.

In financial services, consumers tend to be more cautious and control-oriented, relying on safeguards such as PIN codes and staying alert to threats like card skimming. With technology, however, users often adopt new devices and applications quickly, without the same level of scrutiny.

“When it comes to technology, the trust level is through the roof,” Watne said, noting how readily people click through prompts and grant access to new tools.

As AI systems become more capable of acting on users’ behalf, he said that trust will require far greater scrutiny.