Europol warns of ‘sinister’ criminal abuse of ChatGPT

The European Police Agency warned on Monday that criminals are using artificial intelligence like ChatGPT to commit fraud and other cybercrimes.

From phishing to disinformation and malware, the rapidly evolving capabilities of chatbots are being used not only to improve humanity but also to deceive it, Europol said in a new report.

Created by US startup OpenAI, ChatGPT appeared in November, and users were quickly amazed by its ability to answer difficult questions clearly, write sonnets or code, and even pass exams.

“The fact that criminals can take advantage of these types of artificial intelligence systems presents a grim prospect,” The Hague-based Europol said.

Europol’s new “Innovation Lab” looked at the use of chatbots as a whole, but focused on ChatGPT during several workshops because it is the highest profile and most widely used, it said.

The agency found that criminals could use ChatGPT to “significantly speed up the investigative process” in areas they know nothing about.

That could include drafting text to commit fraud or providing information “how to break into a home, terrorism, cybercrime and child sexual abuse,” it said.

The chatbot’s ability to mimic speech style made it particularly effective at phishing, where users are tricked into clicking fake email links that then try to steal their information, it said.

ChatGPT’s ability to quickly produce authentic-sounding text makes it “ideal for propaganda and disinformation purposes, as it allows users to create and disseminate messages that reflect a particular narrative with relatively little effort.”

ChatGPT can also be used to write computer code, especially for non-technical criminals. Europol said.

“This type of automated code generation is particularly useful for those criminal actors who have little or no knowledge of coding and development,” it said.

Early research by US-Israeli cyber threat intelligence firm Check Point Research (CPR) showed how the chatbot could be used to infiltrate online systems by creating phishing emails, Europol said.

While ChatGPT had safeguards in place, including content controls that do not respond to questions classified as malicious or biased, they could be circumvented with sly prompts, Europol said.

The AI was still in its early stages and its capabilities were “expected to continue to improve over time,” it added.

“It is extremely important that awareness of this issue is raised so that potential loopholes are identified and closed as quickly as possible,” Europol said.

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