Law enforcement needs to fight fire with fire on AI threats

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UK law enforcement agencies have been urged to employ a more proactive approach to AI-related cyber crime as threats posed by the technology accelerate.

The Alan Turing Institute, the UK's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, is calling for the creation of a dedicated AI Crime Taskforce within the National Crime Agency.

Research from the institute shows there's been a substantial acceleration in AI-enabled crime - particularly financial crime, phishing, and romance scams.

"AI-enabled crime is already causing serious personal and social harm and big financial losses," said Joe Burton, professor of international security at Lancaster University and one of the authors of the report.

"We need to get serious about our response and give law enforcement the necessary tools to actively disrupt criminal groups. If we don’t, we’re set to see the rapid expansion of criminal use of AI technologies."

The report warned that Chinese innovation in frontier AI is having a worrying effect, with criminals exploiting new open weight systems with fewer guardrails to carry out more advanced tasks.

And it's the ability of AI to automate, augment, and rapidly scale the volume of criminal activity that's behind the rise in AI-enabled crime. These tools are being used and shared by state, private sector, and criminal groups, which is prompting a surge in activity..

"As AI tools continue to advance, criminals and fraudsters will exploit them, challenging law enforcement and making it even more difficult for potential victims to distinguish between what’s real and what’s fake," said Ardi Janjeva, senior research associate at the Alan Turing Institute and a co-author of the report.

"It’s crucial that agencies fighting crime develop effective ways to mitigate this, including combatting AI with AI."

Fighting fire with fire

AI is already being used to identify malicious actors in real time, support the analysis of large volumes of text data, and counter AI-generated deepfakes, phishing scams, and misinformation campaigns, according to the institute.

The authors of the report have called for a sharpened focus on extending this and to equip agencies with more advanced tools.

Central to this is the creation of a new AI Crime Taskforce within the National Crime Agency’s National Cyber Crime Unit, to coordinate a national response to AI-enabled crime.

It should collect data from across UK law enforcement to monitor and log criminal groups’ use of AI, working with national security and industry partners on strategies, and work fast to scale up the adoption of AI tools to disrupt criminal networks proactively.

Cooperation with European and international law enforcement partners needs to be improved. This, the report noted, will ensure there's compatibility in approaches to deterring, disrupting, and pursuing criminal groups leveraging AI.

The report also calls for a new working group in Europol focused on AI-enabled crime.

Law enforcement shouldn't just be mapping AI tools in policing, however. The report suggested agencies should also be logging the tools that are being misused for criminal purposes on a new central database within the proposed AI Crime Taskforce.

All this, for course, will take time, expertise and money, and the report acknowledges that there's a shortage of skills within law enforcement, as well as gaps in regulation.

As a result, enhanced training will be needed to fix that, the authors said.

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Emma Woollacott is a freelance journalist writing for publications including the BBC, Private Eye, Forbes, Raconteur and specialist technology titles.