Organised crime gangs are turning to AI-powered scams and payment systems to target victims, allowing them to rapidly and more cheaply scale up operations globally and making them harder to detect, Europol warned on Tuesday.

From fraud and ransomware to drug trafficking: according to Europol, the internet has become the main arena for serious crime. The enemy: encryption.

The European Union’s law enforcement agency is warning that artificial intelligence is turbocharging organized crime that is eroding the foundations of societies across the 27-nation bloc as it becomes intertwined with state-sponsored destabilization efforts.