Researchers at the Virginia-based company found
"numerous instances" since 2019 in which AI-generated content, such
as fabricated profile pictures, had been used in politically-motivated online
influence campaigns.
These included campaigns from groups aligned with the
governments of Russia, China, Iran, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Cuba, Argentina,
Mexico, Ecuador, and El Salvador, the report said.
It comes amid a recent boom in generative AI models such as
ChatGPT, which make it far easier to create convincing fake videos, images,
text, and computer code. Security officials have warned of such models being
used by cybercriminals.
Generative AI would enable groups with limited resources to
produce higher quality content for influence campaigns at scale, Mandiant
researchers said.
A pro-China information campaign named Dragonbridge, for
instance, had expanded "exponentially" across 30 social platforms and
10 different languages since it first began by targetting pro-democracy
protesters in Hong Kong in 2019, said Sandra Joyce, vice president at Mandiant
Intelligence.
Yet, the impact of such campaigns was limited. "From an
effectiveness standpoint, not a lot of wins there," she said. "They
really haven't changed the course of the threat landscape just yet."
China has denied U.S. accusations of involvement in such
influence campaigns in the past.
Mandiant, which helps public and private organisations
respond to digital breaches, said it hadn't yet seen AI play a key role in
threats from Russia, Iran, China, or North Korea. AI use for digital intrusions
is expected to remain low in the near term, the researchers said.
"Thus far, we haven't seen a single incident response
where AI played a role," said Joyce. "They haven't really been
brought into any kind of practical usage that outweighs what could be done with
normal tooling that we've seen."
But she added: "We can be very confident that this is
going to be a problem that gets bigger over time." © Reuters