Generative AI is making phishing attacks more dangerous

AI phishing attacks

On the attack side, generative AI increases the effectiveness and impact of a variety of cyberthreats and phishing scams. Consider the following.

General phishing attacks

Generative AI can make traditional phishing attacks — via emails, direct messages and spurious websites — more realistic by eliminating spelling errors and grammatical mistakes and adopting convincingly professional writing styles.

Large language models (LLMs) can also absorb real-time information from news outlets, corporate websites and other sources. Incorporating of-the-moment details into phishing emails could both make the messages more believable and generate a sense of urgency that compels targets to act.

Finally, AI chatbots can create and spread business email compromise and other phishing campaigns at a much faster rate than humans ever could on their own, increasing the surface area of such attacks.

Source