Speaking at the fund\u2019s annual meetings in the Thai capital, she was keen to hammer home the importance of guarding against \u201cbad actors\u201d in a rapidly changing, interconnected world\u00a0\u2013 especially now that AI was \u201cputting the potential of digital fraud on steroids\u201d.<\/p>\n
Policymakers have been warning for some time that the AI boom could at some point threaten financial stability via a share price crash \u2013 a \u201ccorrection\u201d, as it is euphemistically called.<\/p>\n
But a different, related threat came into sharp focus in Bangkok. Georgieva said she was concerned that cybercrime, turbocharged by AI, could undermine trust in the financial system altogether.<\/p>\n
Social media feeds are rife with adverts using celebrity fakes to punt cryptocurrencies or gold, and even the old-school email-style scams can be generated far more prolifically.<\/p>\n
Just as a sea of AI slop has the potential to undermine trust in fact-based reporting and send people down political rabbit holes, Georgieva fretted that cyber-fraud could knock consumer confidence in mainstream banks.<\/p>\n
Recalling her own childhood behind the iron curtain in Bulgaria, she said many people did not trust the system, and kept their cash in a shoebox under the bed. \u201cI worry, today, that unless we figure out how to get ahead of this curve \u2026 we may end up with lots of people with shoeboxes under their beds,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It might not even take a cybercrime wave. This week the JP Morgan chief executive, Jamie Dimon, warned that the bank would not allow digital agents to operate on its customers\u2019 behalf. \u201cYou don\u2019t want rogue agents, and there could be thousands of them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The IMF\u2019s Kristalina Georgieva is concerned that cybercrime, turbocharged by AI, could undermine trust in the financial system. Photograph: Lillian Suwanrumpha\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
AI agents, including Meta\u2019s Muse, are starting to offer their users the opportunity to hand over their financial details. The agents will then scout for the highest savings rates and shift the user\u2019s money accordingly.<\/p>\n
Financial regulators fret about this for a number of reasons. One is that if such services become widely used, they could have destabilising herding effects. With deposits able to be moved around the financial system at a moment\u2019s notice, it could accelerate a bank run in times of uncertainty.<\/p>\n
A second worry is that highlighted by Dimon: who is responsible if your AI agent makes a financial decision on your behalf that turns out to be disastrous\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or even criminal?<\/p>\n
The answer is probably that we will need case law to find out, which will only come when something goes badly awry.<\/p>\n
That is alarming because legal ambiguity about who owes what to whom when things go wrong can be an accelerant to financial instability.<\/p>\n
We learned that lesson back in the 2008 financial crisis, when it turned out that some banks had built financial products with such fiendishly complex liability structures that they were effectively impossible to value \u2013 unleashing panic.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter |Every weekday<\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Speaking alongside Georgieva, the Bank of England governor, Andrew Bailey, who chairs the Financial Stability Board of global central bankers, pointed to another arresting news story from this week \u2013 that Anthropic had warned AI models might soon be able to \u201cself-replicate\u201d in domestic devices<\/a>. Who should bear the responsibility \u2013 and the costs \u2013 if your internet-enabled oven, or telly, blows up as a result?<\/p>\n One entirely prudent response might be for consumers to reject internet-enabled devices and stick to \u201cdumb\u201d appliances instead that can\u2019t be hijacked by self-replicating bots. This month, some of those French supermarkets rushed to take their fridges offline to avoid the hack.<\/p>\n While it may not be much of a loss to society if internet-enabled kettles and fridges do not take off, the financial analogue to a dumb appliance would be Georgieva\u2019s shoeboxes \u2013 and that would have costs for those consumers, and the smooth running of the economy as a whole.<\/p>\n As Bailey somewhat apocalyptically put it: \u201cIf we don\u2019t have trust in money, we don\u2019t operate as a society.\u201d<\/p>\n Senior financial policymakers are genuinely disturbed at the collision between rapidly developing AI and the global financial system \u2013 which now extends well beyond heavily regulated banks \u2013 to embrace social media platforms, payments apps and other financial tools.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792344252_75_500.jpg\")
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