Generative AI enables terrorism

In the last few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has taken centre stage in public, academic, and political discussions. Generative AI, in particular, produces new content in response to prompts, offering transformative potential across multiple fields such as education, entertainment, healthcare, and scientific research. While generative AI is expanding quickly, it is also leading to several uncertainties in areas such as human rights, existing technologies (for example, ), and migration, amongst others. Terrorist groups are also growing interested in exploiting this new technology and using it to their advantage.  

The use of technology by terrorist groups is not a new topic, as technology has always played a vital role in the work done by terrorist organisations. However, with the latest developments in artificial intelligence and generative AI, some terrorist groups now consider the “benefits” of these technologies. The advantages of generative AI for malicious purposes are notable - from interactive recruitment to developing propaganda and influencing people’s behaviour via social media channels. New technological advances open multiple doors to infinite possibilities that terrorist groups are prepared to exploit and use to their advantage.  

This analysis describes some of the risks posed by generative AI when used by terrorist groups through recent examples and the impact of these tools on people’s behaviours—a key area that terrorist organisations aim to influence. Having such a powerful tool as generative AI in their hands, the possibility of exploiting it in multiple ways could rise in the future.  

What is AI and Generative AI? 

The rapid advancement of technology is shaping our lives and opening new opportunities for the future, both positive and negative. AI has been a  across several fields, leading to significant developments in technology and operational systems. According to the , AI “is a general-purpose technology that has the potential to improve the welfare and well-being of people, to contribute to positive, sustainable global economic activity, to increase innovation and productivity, and to help respond to key global challenges”. The systems are designed to operate at significant levels of automation. However, it is essential to understand that AI has several iterations, one of which is generative AI, which has shown immense potential in diverse fields in recent months.  

 uses machine learning to generate new content, text, images, audio, video, and multifunctional simulations. It works by using large amounts of datasets and parameters inspired by connections within the human brain. The main difference between generative AI and other forms of AI is that generative AI systems can develop new outputs instead of just predicting and categorising like other machine learning systems. Some examples of generative AI applications include:  

Text-based chatbots or programs designed to simulate conversations with humans, such as Anthropic’s Claude, Bing Chat, ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Llama 2.  

Image or video generators like the Bing Image Creator, DALL-E 3, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion.  

Voice generators, such as Microsoft VALL-E. 

With all these programs, interest in using generative AI has increased significantly, not just from states, the private sector and the general public, but also from terrorist organisations who see an opportunity to expand their propaganda and increase their influence worldwide to support their operations. There is a  that new technology, such as generative AI, will play a significant role in the tactics and modus operandi of terrorist organisations. Groups such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hezbollah have already been active in the use of these technologies.  

Research on Terrorist Actors Exploiting Generative AI  

The road to using generative AI seems to be in its early stages as more terrorist groups take advantage of this new technology. For the moment, some attention has been devoted to how terrorists may use AI-based technologies in the future, such as AI and interactive recruitment, intensive propaganda, disinformation, hallucination, or war operations. These are individually discussed below.  

Propaganda and Disinformation   

Propaganda is one of the main tools that terrorist groups use to promote their values and beliefs. With the help of generative AI, propaganda can be more easily spread, and its impact could increase considerably, making it more efficient and tailored to its targets. Propaganda can be used to spread hate speech and radical ideologies.  synthetic (fake) images, videos, or audio that align with the organisations’ values could help increase the breadth of propaganda produced, intensify messages, and affect people’s attitudes and emotions (e.g. using fake pictures of wounded victims/children to have an emotional impact on the audience). Introducing generative AI in propaganda can generate a false reality, allowing threat actors to sow chaos and disorder through misinformation and disinformation. Uploading specific generated AI content on social media platforms may increase the audience and spread disinformation as the content can be shared by millions of followers quickly. Having this worldwide effect, social media could also be identified as a powerful weapon in today’s disinformation wars, whereby people can no longer rely on what they read or hear. Generative AI has the  to create several challenges in online communication and media, especially regarding misinformation and disinformation. 

The current war in Gaza is an example where terrorists have used generative AI as different images have been leaked on the internet to instigate more violence and increase their propaganda of disinformation. Some pictures of babies or young people who have been injured in the war appeared to be  by using generative AI to create more chaos and disturbing content on the internet. Connected with the same conflict were the images and videos of the IDF soldiers wearing diapers on social media. The  appeared to be generated by a Hamas-affiliated group using generative AI, and it aimed to undermine the Israeli army. The images spread immediately on the internet, increasing misinformation related to the reality that is going on in Gaza.  

In recent months, some terrorist organisations have also released guidelines on how to use AI to develop propaganda and .  of content that has started to spread on the internet are the Islamic State publishing a tech support guide on how to securely use generative AI tools in the summer of 2023, a pro-al-Qaeda outlet publishing several posters with images highly likely to have been created using generative AI, and far-right figures producing a ‘guide to memetic warfare’ advising others on how to use AI-generated image tools to create extremist memes.  pro-Islamic State affiliates have used generative AI to translate Arabic-language ISIS propaganda speech/message into Arabic script, Indonesian, and English, al-Qaeda affiliates have also used generative AI for propaganda content.  

Through all these methods, terrorists could use generative AI to create hallucinations through diverse strategies, like psychological warfare, false flag operations, or propaganda to influence people’s behaviour. Hallucinations mainly refer to situations where the AI system generates unexpected, unusual, or nonsensical outputs. For example, a  trained on text data might produce hallucinatory content that seems coherent at first glance but, at a closer look, contains nonsensical sentences or contradictions. Similarly, an AI model trained on image data might generate hallucinatory images that contain improbable combinations of objects or distorted features to affect more people.  

One of the  of authorities is using these technologies for intensive propaganda and disinformation with the click of a button. When merged with advancements in targeted advertising and other new effective propaganda measures, generative AI forecasts a transformation in the speed, scale, and credibility of terrorism influence operations. This opportunity to influence people through generative AI could lead to a higher capability to influence people’s behaviours and a gap in the possibility of distinguishing between real and fake online content. Through these, terrorist groups can take advantage and share their ideologies worldwide.  

Interactive Recruitment 

Moving from propaganda to interactive recruitment is just one further step in terrorist use of generative AI. The two can be very well connected as  can interact with potential recruits by providing recruiters with tailored information based on their interests and beliefs, thereby making the extremist group’s messages seem more related to their interests. In the recruitment process, a bot can be used to gain the attention of the possible victims by engaging with the person and offering responses to their input. Later, a human being might take over the conversation to engage more personally. On the other hand, the advanced technology, LLMs like ChatGPT, enables terrorist groups to provide a humanlike experience even without the interference of any humans. Applying generative AI has the potential to increase terrorists’ ability to build personal relationships and especially reach lone actors who might be sympathetic to their  or otherwise have vulnerabilities which can be exploited by intense interaction with such bots.  

Connected with the recruitment process is the possibility of the , where the AI could be used to amplify the content on social media channels and other digital platforms to spread propaganda and recruit followers, from encrypted communication to other quite innovative methods. Since 2019,  has been using social media and the internet to impose violence in its regions of influence, especially in Israel. Perhaps the use of technology at that time was not called generative AI, but the techniques were similar: using social media images and videos to recruit Israeli Arabs and West Bank-based Palestinians to attack Israeli targets.  

War Applications  

In addition to the applications of generative AI discussed above, some  have been used for hacking and creating weapons, such as drones and self-driven vehicular bombs. AI technology has been utilised in  in various ways, including autonomous navigation, object detection and recognition, real-time decision-making, and mission planning. This integration enables drones to perform more complex, efficient, and autonomous tasks. Integrating artificial intelligence into drones has changed war tactics, allowing more advanced and strategic applications. Military drones, sometimes referred to as autonomous or “”, fulfil vital functions in reconnaissance, surveillance, and even combat situations. Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) have been described as one of the  by the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee. These drones are remotely piloted, pre-programmed, or controlled airborne tools. Drones are an advantage for terrorists because they are cheap and require minimal training. In the past, terrorists have used drones to attack state military assets, diplomatic places, international trade, and civilian centres. Some of the non-state actors that have deployed drones in combat include Hamas, Hezbollah, and ISIS. The drones are used for intelligence, surveillance, and electronic warfare tactics and help in target points to increase precision and lethality from ground-level .