- Generative AI software is gaining popularity with scammers, according to Chainalysis.
- Threat actors use it to impersonate others or hide their identities.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis is raising the alarm over the soaring use of artificial intelligence in crypto scams.
The firm’s 2025 crypto crime report found the revenue generated by sellers of AI scam services grew 1,900% since 2021.
“The potential of AI technology to exponentially scale crypto scams will further add to the challenges associated with combating these crimes,” Jacqueline Burns Koven, Head of Cyber Threat Intelligence at Chainalysis, told DL News.
Last year, those sellers made $18 million hawking AI software that helps scammers impersonate others or generate realistic content that tricks victims into making fraudulent investments, she said.
The findings come on the back of several warnings from the industry.
In its own 2025 crypto crime report, blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs predicts financial groomers and other scammers will heavily expand their use of AI over the coming year.
At the same time, excitement over AI’s potential to revolutionise the crypto industry in other ways is reaching a fever pitch.
Buzzy cryptocurrencies linked to AI are collectively worth over $28 billion. Investors have poured hundreds of millions into projects tapping both AI and blockchain technologies.
The illicit AI market
Chainalysis identified illicit marketplaces like Huione Guarantee as behind the proliferation of AI scam software.
The platform hosts dozens of software vendors that sell generative AI technology to facilitate scams.
In one listing Chainalysis featured in its report, a vendor advertised AI “face-changing services” for $200 worth of crypto.
Earlier this month, Dawid Moczadło, co-founder of AI security startup Vidoc, posted a video on X of an interview with a candidate who appears to be using such face-changing software.
WTF, people are using real-time AI to alter their faces during interviews
— Dawid Moczadło (@kannthu1) February 4, 2025
this is a REAL recording from a meeting I had with the developer today!!
1. all of his answers were from ChatGPT—I could smell the GPT-4 bullet point-style responses
2. HE WAS USING SOFTWARE TO CHANGE HIS… pic.twitter.com/wXoIqKhzzj
“That’s a [North Korean] IT worker,” Taylor Monahan, the lead security researcher at crypto wallet MetaMask, said in response to the post. “Make sure you haven’t hired any already. Like, 50% of your applicants are them.”
More than 4,000 North Koreans have been directed to worm their way into jobs in the tech in the West by concealing their identities, according to the United Nations Security Council.
Aside from fraudulently earning wages, workers also use their positions as employees to spread malware on internal systems and steal funds.
In an escalating game of cat-and-mouse, many North Korean workers now use the kinds of AI scamming software sold on Huione to mask their identities in an attempt to avoid suspicion.
Chainalysis also tracked onchain records that tie crypto wallets purchasing scam software to pig butchering scams — a kind of ruse where a victim is tricked into sending funds — usually in the form of cryptocurrency — by gaining their trust.
In January, a French woman was conned out of $850,000 over several months by scammers using AI software to impersonate celebrity actor Brad Pitt.
In one case highlighted by Chainalysis, a wallet received proceeds from a pig butchering scam just three days after purchasing AI software from a Huione vendor.
The narrow timeframe shows how quickly scammers can execute against their victims using the software, Chainalysis said.
Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.
