Whilst AI is being used to do a massive amount of good, it also adds realism to scams and other online harms.
From being known by relatively few people and understood by even fewer, the term AI (or artificial intelligence) is now in common usage with everybody from tech experts to the general population. What most people also know is that it has both positive and negative aspects.
AI has been with us for far longer than you might realise, playing its part in many aspects of our everyday lives from social media to satnav, online dating to booking a table. Constantly increasing in sophistication, it now forms a major part of many organisations’ strategy and enables huge advances in most fields from healthcare to transportation, manufacturing to marketing, finance to crime prevention. For individuals, a number of generative AI tools are freely available for searching and producing content.
What are the everyday issues?
As well as the great things it can do, AI has a number of negative aspects – aside from concerns that it’s taking over jobs and giving its users unfair advantage.
- Most online crime and other harms have always involved impersonation – whether it’s of your bank, the tax authorities or other government department, someone you talk to on social media, a gaming or dating site, a celebrity supposedly endorsing a product or service … or even a friend or colleague. Now, however, AI makes fraudulent photos, videos, phone calls and video calls far more realistic and convincing.
- AI is also being used increasingly to produce deepfake videos for illegal or immoral purposes.
- It is also being used to create and target messages aimed at changing your political or ideological views.
- Another risk is becoming too reliant on AI to perform various tasks which should be carried out by yourself. For example, if you rely on AI to produce any kind of content, the result is only as good as what it can find online and could therefore be either inaccurate or irrelevant. It also means that you’re not using your own skills, which could mislead teachers or employers and become apparent when you take exams or seek a promotion.
For top tips from Get Safe Online and Digi REN to get AI-safe online click here.