From bombmaking to motorcycle tweaks: how Nigerian jihadists use AI

From bombmaking to motorcycle tweaks: how Nigerian jihadists use AI

Africa's most populous country has been entrenched in an insurgency since 2009, and technological advancements by militants are not new. Jihadists in west Africa and worldwide have long spread propaganda with the aid of the internet and online messaging platforms -- and more recently adapted recreational drones for combat. But "AI adoption by terrorist groups has been much faster, more extensive and more systematic than we thought," Antonia Jue…

Boko Haram's two-year journey into frontier AI: What a Cambridge study reveals

It was never really in doubt that insurgent groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) had joined the rest of the country in figuring out what frontier AI models like ChatGPT and Claude could do for them. Bandits livestream their raids on TikTok now. Kidnap gangs negotiate ransoms over WhatsApp. It would have been strange, at this point, if insurgent groups sitting on captured smartphones and stolen SIM cards had s…