As the Middle East waits on fraught peace negotiations, Iran’s embattled hackers have been hunched over their laptops, chatting to a game-changing new weapon: US-made AI models.
ChatGPT, Gemini and other western AI programmes have turbocharged Iran’s cyber operations, helping them develop malware, craft phishing messages in perfect Hebrew and Arabic, and then unleash attacks at unprecedented scale and speed, cyber experts and tech companies say.
“We are seeing signs that they are using AI prompts the entire way,” said a cyber security analyst at a big firm, speaking anonymously to discuss the sensitive issue. “It has absolutely helped them raise their game.”