Artificial intelligence is an important driver of a more dynamic world. As a subfield of computer science, AI pledges to improve efficiency and provide higher levels of both autonomy and automation. 

Last year, more businesses had already integrated AI in some capacity within their own processes. In fact, 37% of businesses and organizations have adopted the use of AI in 2020. With the use of these technologies, business tools can better forecast a customer’s buying behavior, which will lead to more revenue.  

Artificial Intelligence Abuse

AI provides a host of benefits for businesses to determine the buying behavior of their customers. It can also support important infrastructures and industries. However, with all the good that this technology provides, its very existence invites corrupt actors to attack and abuse it for their own gain. Some of the most popular abuses of AI are as follows:

• Deepfakes

Increasingly popular misuse of AI is in the form of Deepfakes. By using AI capabilities, audio and visual content can be manipulated in order to appear real.

Deepfakes can be used in “disinformation campaigns” as it is difficult to determine if it is genuine. Further damage can be done when these campaigns are unleashed on social media, as it is able to reach millions all over the world at record-breaking speed. Many of these deepfakes have been used to damage people’s reputation. 

• Password Guessing

Cybercriminals are hard at work, utilizing machine learning in order to guess users’ passwords. By using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), cybercriminals are able to analyze an extensive amount of password datasets.  This in turn creates password variations that correspond with the statistical distribution. In time, this could result in more precise password guesses and an increased chance for profit. 

• Impersonation On Social Media

Another rampant abuse by cybercriminals is the use of AI to mimic human behavior. They fool bot detection systems by imitating “human-like usage patterns”.

A discussion on a forum mentioned the probability of creating an Instagram bot that could create fake accounts, produce likes, and “run follow backs”. AI technology can also be used to mimic user movements such as dragging and selecting. 

Criminal Exploitation Of AI Is The Future

Cybercriminals have chosen AI in order to improve their range of attack. By using AI these bad actors are able to work behind the scenes, undetected, and also utilize it as an “attack surface”.

Through social engineering strategies, criminals are able to trick organizations by using phishing and business email compromise (BEC) scams. 

AI is also known to be used to exploit cryptocurrency trading activities. There is evidence of AI bots that can assimilate trading strategies that are successful from historic data. This improves the development of predictions as well as trades. 

We Must Be Prepared

The trends are pointed towards a future that is fraught with malicious activities from cybercriminals. It is critical that businesses and organizations remain vigilant and continue to be educated on how AI technology is being exploited. 

Becoming familiar with how these technologies are being ill-used only increases understanding as to how more can be done to protect devices, systems, and the general population from these sophisticated attacks. 

AI and machine learning (ML) technologies have so many uses for good such as: language translations, speech recognition, visual perception, and so much more. More has to be done to ensure this useful and innovative technology does not fall into the wrong hands.