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Europol warns of criminal use of ChatGPT

Europol, the European Union‘s police intelligence agency , presented a technical report warning of the exponential advance of chatbots, especially ChatGPT. According to research by the authorities, there are three main areas within the digital realm that this type of artificial intelligence is likely to boost, and not in a positive way. Are they: 

  • Phishing scams; 
  • Disinformation; 
  • Cyber ​​crimes.

“As the capabilities of LLMs (large language models) such as ChatGPT are being actively improved, the potential exploitation of these types of AI systems by criminals provides a bleak outlook,” Europol said when presenting its first technical report aimed at the theme. 

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According to the agency, the problems range from legal to ethical issues. The ability to impersonate a real person is a huge opportunity to reach victims, whether creating phishing content or mass-creating authentic texts for the purpose of propaganda and even disinformation — a problem that many countries already face with social networks

Shuttersv/Shutterstock
Shuttersv/Shutterstock

“It [the chatbot] allows users to generate and spread messages that reflect a specific narrative with relatively little effort.” Criminals with little technical knowledge can turn to ChatGPT to produce malicious code, Europol highlighted. 

Launched in December 2022, ChatGPT, powered by OpenAI and backed by Microsoft, has become a massive worldwide phenomenon, setting off a global race for generative AI technology. After the arrival of the platform, companies like Google, Baidu and even Microsoft itself incorporated the feature into their products or launched similar versions — Baidu, for example, announced the Ernie Bot . 

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Google releases early access to Bard, the rival of ChatGPT

With a question-and-answer system, ChatGPT (and chatbots) are programmed to “think” and answer complex questions and queries in the most natural way possible, almost like a human. The tool has also proven to be an option for creating content — LinkedIn even integrated AI into its platform to help users create and optimize profiles.

Via Reuters

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