The OP asked about a realistic scenario in the near future.

Your example of a general AI seems to fall outside those constraints.

More realistic than SkyNet was the only qualification given, but point taken.

Your are right that "more realistic" isn't the same as "realistic". I took it to mean the latter as otherwise we're in movie plot territory.

I regard "what if in the near future" as another qualification.

I think we're within 20 years of computers being able to hold a freeform conversation in text or speech to do what I described. To chat someone up on Facebook or the equivalent, talk on the phone and convincingly imitate a real person. For reference, Dr. Sbaitso was created in 1991[1], and look how far we've come since then with Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, Bixby.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Sbaitso

Hmm, what you wrote was "socially engineer passwords and banking info from victims online".

According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test :

> In the 21st century, versions of these programs (now known as "chatterbots") continue to fool people. "CyberLover", a malware program, preys on Internet users by convincing them to "reveal information about their identities or to lead them to visit a web site that will deliver malicious content to their computers".[33] The program has emerged as a "Valentine-risk" flirting with people "seeking relationships online in order to collect their personal data".[34]

It may be that a computer with the ability to hold a freeform conversation/"advanced AI" is not necessary to do the social engineering you mentioned earlier.