Give a man a phishing kit and he might get lucky a couple of times; teach an AI to phish and it'll change the landscape, if KnowBe4's latest phishing trends report is accurate.

The cybersecurity and phishing awareness outfit released the seventh edition of its Phishing Threat Trends report on Thursday, and it appears that the internet's legions of phishermen are turning to AI in more ways, and more often, than ever thanks to their widespread adoption of AI.

Nearly 86 percent of phishing campaigns KnowBe4 threat researchers have picked up on in the past six months have involved some sort of use of AI, according to the report. That's a gradual, steady increase over the past two years, too. 80 percent of phishing campaigns made use of AI in 2024, and 84 percent did so last year, suggesting holdouts are increasingly adopting the tech to broaden their reach.

That number may be troubling enough, but it's how AI is being used that KnowBe4 points out is the biggest problem. Well-written, highly personalized AI-crafted phishing messages are bad enough, but AI is also automating the reconnaissance and info gathering phases of a campaign, speeding up the phishing process and giving attackers more time to shift to multiple attack vectors to better gain their victims' trust.

While the report doesn't compile vectors as a share of total phishing attacks, it does note that there has been a 49 percent increase in phishing attacks that involve calendar invites, and a 41 percent increase in attacks that involve Microsoft Teams messages impersonating coworkers like IT support employees in order to harvest credentials and the like.