Experts fear terrorists are exploiting artificial intelligence (AI)

Director of the United Nations Interregional Institute for Justice and Crime Antonia Marie De Meo has produced a report on how terrorists can exploit AI.

She said that terrorists have achieved many bad purposes through the world of cybercrime, such as increasing cyber attacks, spreading hate speech, inciting violence online...

Law enforcement needs to be at the forefront of AI, Antonia Marie De Meo concluded. “We hope this report will be the start of a conversation about the use of AI for terrorist purposes,” she said.

Antonia Marie De Meo's report supports a study jointly conducted by the Center of Excellence for Counterterrorism Defense (Türkiye) and the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, which argues that terrorist groups are exploiting AI for recruitment and attacks.

In the study's introduction, the authors note: "The line between fact and fiction is blurring in an age of rapid technological advancement, requiring governments, industries and academia to unite in building ethical frameworks and regulations."

The study documents use cases of OpenAI’s ChatGPT for phishing emails, malware installation, disinformation, and online propaganda. Cybercriminals and terrorists have quickly become adept at using such platforms, along with large general language models, to create deepfakes or chatbots to steal sensitive personal and financial information or plan terrorist attacks and attract supporters.

The report, by Antonia Marie De Meo, notes that staying ahead of terrorists and predicting how they will use AI will be a daunting task. It will require not only finding ways to use AI that no one has thought of before, but also preventing criminals from using the same methods.