Security News > 2023 > January > AI-generated phishing emails just got much more convincing

GPT-3 language models are being abused to do much more than write college essays, according to WithSecure researchers.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, GPT-3 proved to be helpful at crafting a convincing email thread to use in a phishing campaign and social media posts, complete with hashtags, to harass a made-up CEO of a robotics company.

In another test, the report authors asked GPT-3 to generate fake news stories because, as they wrote, "One of the most obvious uses for a large language model would be the creation of fake news." The researchers prompted GPT-3 to write an article blaming the US for the Nordstream 2 pipeline attack in 2022.

With long-form content, as other researchers have pointed out, GPT-3 sometimes breaks a sentence halfway through, suggesting that human editors will still be needed to craft or at least proofread text, malicious or otherwise - for now.

In addition to using GPT-3 to help generate definitions, the authors also asked the AI to review their research.

"While the report does an excellent job of highlighting the potential dangers posed by GPT-3, it fails to propose any solutions to address these threats," the GPT-3 generated review said.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/01/11/gpt3_phishing_emails/