News
Announcements from Tech Against Terrorism and coverage of the Counter-Terrorism AI (CT-AI) Benchmark in the press.
In the news
AI developers to do more to stop growing terrorist, extremist use
“A model that will iterate with a user, answer follow-up questions and refine an approach is behaving less like a manual and more like a coach.”
Boko Haram exploited US and Chinese AI chatbots for attacks, Cambridge study finds
“Tech Against Terrorism... highlighted in a new report that around a third of AI model responses provided 'meaningful' assistance to terrorists beyond what could easily be found by web search.”
Explained: Why AI's next major security challenge could be terrorism
“Tech Against Terrorism... tested more than two dozen leading AI models using thousands of prompts based on real terrorism cases. It found that only 57 per cent of the prompts resulted in complete refusals.”
AI Chatbots Emerge As New Terror Planning Tools For Al-Qaeda And Extremist Groups
“It's one thing to find a bomb-making manual, it is quite another to have a bomb-making coach.”
Could AI help al-Qaida and other groups plan terror attacks?
“A determined person will eventually find most information... But what these models change is speed, ease and comprehensiveness.”
How Terrorist Groups Are Using AI to Gain an Edge in Battle
“Tech Against Terrorism... last week released results from AI tests gauging how more than two dozen leading models responded to thousands of prompts drawn from real-world terrorism cases.”
Syndicated via The Seattle Times.
Letter: Digital safety should start with today's threats
“Adam Hadley CBE responds to Sam Altman's proposal for an IAEA-style body for frontier AI.”
Letter to the editor by Adam Hadley CBE, Executive Director of Tech Against Terrorism, not third-party coverage.
Saudi Arabia Warns AI Is Becoming a Counterterrorism Threat
“Adam Hadley... said many models tested with simple, single-shot questions provided meaningful assistance toward bomb-making or mass-casualty attack planning, calling the result 'not acceptable.'”
AI models provide assistance to terror attacks
“Until now, there was no AI benchmark focused specifically on terrorism, so we built one.”
Extremists are using AI voice cloning to supercharge propaganda. Experts say it's helping them grow
“The adoption of AI-enabled translation by terrorists and extremists marks a significant evolution in digital propaganda strategies.”
How terrorist groups are leveraging AI to recruit and finance their operations
“Generative AI amplifies threats posed by existing technologies rather than creating entirely new threat categories.”
Hitler chatbot 'a clear security threat' amid radicalisation fears
“It would appear that the potential weaponisation of chatbots is well under way and now presents a clear security threat.”
Verified via Tech Against Terrorism's in-the-news reproduction.
Generative AI sees spike in extremist propaganda use amidst Israel-Hamas war
“Our biggest concern is that if terrorists start using gen AI to manipulate imagery at scale, this could well destroy hash-sharing as a solution.”
Here's How Violent Extremists Are Exploiting Generative AI Tools
“Tech Against Terrorism identified roughly 5,000 pieces of AI-generated extremist content per week.”
Essential reading
Selected by Tech Against Terrorism; not coverage of our work.
How Terrorist Groups Are Using A.I. to Gain an Edge in Battle
Field evidence from interviews with 27 former Boko Haram fighters that mainstream chatbots are used across the attack chain, not just for propaganda.
AI guardrails stripped from Meta and Google models in minutes
The clearest account of why open weights cannot be recalled: thousands of de-censored models, downloaded millions of times.
Militant groups are experimenting with AI, and the risks are expected to grow
Wire overview of militant experimentation with generative AI, with candid caveats on the limits of adoption so far.
Las Vegas Cybertruck suspect used ChatGPT to plan blast, police say
The first case police named on US soil of a chatbot used to help plan an attack.
These ISIS news anchors are AI fakes. Their propaganda is real.
The investigation that broke News Harvest, Islamic State supporters' AI-generated news anchors.
Urgent need for terrorism AI laws, warns think tank
The UK's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation was recruited by an extremist chatbot, exposing the gap in the law.
How a chatbot encouraged a man who wanted to kill the Queen
The first court case to put chatbot-assisted radicalisation on the record.