Report on the Malicious Uses of AI
OpenAI just published its annual report on malicious uses of AI.
By using AI as a force multiplier for our expert investigative teams, in the three months since our last report we’ve been able to detect, disrupt and expose abusive activity including social engineering, cyber espionage, deceptive employment schemes, covert influence operations and scams.
These operations originated in many parts of the world, acted in many different ways, and focused on many different targets. A significant number appeared to originate in China: Four of the 10 cases in this report, spanning social engineering, covert influence operations and cyber threats, likely had a Chinese origin. But we’ve disrupted abuses from many other countries too: this report includes case studies of a likely task scam from Cambodia, comment spamming apparently from the Philippines, covert influence attempts potentially linked with Russia and Iran, and deceptive employment schemes.
Reports like these give a brief window into the ways AI is being used by malicious actors around the world. I say “brief” because last year the models weren’t good enough for these sorts of things, and next year the threat actors will run their AI models locally—and we won’t have this kind of visibility.
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Ian Stewart • June 6, 2025 11:15 AM
This is inevitable and an extension of various other forms of propaganda and manipulation; especially as AI is now used to get and check information.
Fact checkers have long been politically biased, even the B.B.C.’s Verify in Britain, that claims an objective authority, states so-called facts that are categorically wrong. AI is obviously going to have the same inteference. Ask chatgpt about transgender issues and you will see raw bigotry.
This would not be such a serious a problem if people were not so trusting of information they get from the internet.