AI and Emerging Cybercrimes

These days, the world is buzzing with AI and digital innovations. Every month, new AI tools emerge and AI is used to replace human workers, causing the job market to rapidly change in response. AI innovation has become closely embedded in our daily lives, as students use AI for their assignments, and some people use conversational AI as their own personalized counsellors. AI is now able to create PPTs for presentations, write poems, movies,  and songs. It's as if we are moving toward the "future" that we dreamed of as children through AI.

However, AI, which has the advantage of being able to create what you imagine with just a few prompts, is an exceptionally useful tool, even for people with malicious intentions. In this article, we will look at specific crimes and how AI can be exploited to commit cybercrimes.

1. Malware Manufacturing

Do you know that ChatGPT, which we often use in our daily lives, can now use coding? Coding is not just a professional skill which takes years to master as with AI you can create the code you want, even with limited prior knowledge of coding. However, this also means that people can write a prompt asking AI to make Malware. Malware is software for the purpose of unauthorized penetration, infection, spread, and destruction. Such Malware can be used to paralyze a company's system, demand money by file encryption, or steal personal passwords or personal information.

2. Phishing

People often use ChatGPT to write formal emails as conversational AI, in particular, excels at analyzing language patterns and contexts. These advantages of AI can be used for phishing, a social engineering scam that tricks recipients into handing over sensitive personal information or executing malicious links/attachments. AI can create natural and persuasive emails and text messages and send them in large quantities. It is also possible for AI to translate messages into different languages and change the tone of speech of phishing material, which makes deceiving others even easier.

3. Deepfakes & Misinformation

AI can also be used to create deepfakes and fake news. Deepfake refers to a fake image, audio, or video made by generative AI that looks real. AI can synthesize voices with images of celebrities or imitate news-style videos to cause damage, such as election/public opinion manipulation and defamation. These deepfake crimes can be used to synthesize sexual images, making women and children particularly vulnerable. The fact that AI tools to produce such deepfakes are not difficult to use and can be easily used also deepens concerns about deepfake crimes.

AI, a new technology that enriches our lives, has brought us new forms of crime at the same time. How should we punish and prevent these new forms of crime? How should existing laws be applied? Or, if there is a need for a law that reflects the unique nature of AI, what ethical standards should it be based on? It is a key task that we must address in a world that must live with AI in the future.

Reference

Shetty, S., Choi, K.-S., & Park, I. (2024). Investigating the intersection of AI and cybercrime: Risks, trends, and countermeasures. International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime, 7(2), 28–53. https://doi.org/10.52306/2578-3289.1187