TERRORISMHow 'Islamic State' Uses AI to Spread Extremist Propaganda
Groups like the “Islamic State” and al-Qaeda are urging followers to use the latest digital tools to spread their extremist message, avoid censorship and recruit.
The video shows an older episode of Family Guy, one of the world’s best-known cartoon comedy shows, in which the main character, Peter Griffin, drives a van containing a bomb at gunpoint over the bridge. But the audio has been changed.
“Our weapons are heavy, our ranks are many, but the soldiers of Allah are more than ready,” Griffin sings in a tune meant to encourage followers of the extremist “Islamist State” group (IS).
The animation is just one illustration of how extremist groups are using advanced computing or artificial intelligence (AI) to create content for their followers.
The term AI covers a wide range of digital technologies and can mean anything from the faster processing of large amounts of digital data for analysis to what’s known as “generative AI,” which “generates” new text or visuals based on huge amounts of data. That’s how this Peter Griffin song was created.
“The rapid democratization of generative AI technology in recent years … is having a profound impact on how extremist organizations engage in influence operations online,” writes Daniel Siegel, a US researcher who analyzed how AI is used for malicious purposes in an article for the Global Network on Extremism and Technology in which he highlighted the Peter Griffin video.
Increase in Extremists Using AI
Over the past year, observers from a variety of monitoring organizations have reported how IS and other extremist groups are encouraging followers to make use of new digital tools.
In February, a group affiliated with al-Qaeda announced it would start holding AI workshops online, The Washington Post reported. Later, the same group released a guide on using AI chatbots.
In March, after a branch of IS killed over 135 people in a terror attack on a Moscow theater, one of the group’s followers created a fake news broadcast about the event, publishing it four days after the attack.
And earlier this month, officers from Spain’s Ministry of the Interior arrested nine young people around the country who had been sharing propaganda celebrating the IS group, including one man described as being focused on “extremist multimedia content, using specialized editing applications supported by artificial intelligence.”
