Cybercriminals Are Complaining About AI Slop Flooding Their Forums

a complaint is heard Familiar. “I’m disappointed that you’re working to include AI garbage in the site,” one angry person posted anonymously in an online message. “No one is asking for this – we just want you to improve the site, stop charging for new features.”

Only, this is not a regular internet user who is moaning about AI being forced into their favorite app. Instead, they’re complaining about the Cybercrime Forum’s plans to introduce more generative AI. Like millions of others, scammers, grifters, and low-level hackers are growing tired of AI encroaching into their lives and posting low-quality AI slop in their online communities.

“People don’t like it,” says Ben Collier, a security researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. As part of a recent study on how low-level cybercriminals are using AI, Collier and fellow researchers observed a growing response to the use of generative AI in underground cybercrime forums and hacking groups.

During the generative AI boom and hype cycles over the past few years, some people posting on hacking forums have moved from being positive about how AI can help with hacking to becoming more skeptical about the technology, according to the study, which also included researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Strathclyde.

Researchers analyzed 97,895 AI-related conversations on cybercrime forums from the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 to the end of last year. They received complaints about dumping “bullet-pointed explainers” of basic cybersecurity concepts, laments about the number of low-quality posts, and concerns about Google’s AI search observations reducing the number of visitors to the forums.

For decades, cybercrime message boards and marketplaces, often of Russian origin, have allowed scammers to trade together. They are places where stolen data can be traded, hacking jobs are advertised, and fraudsters post nasty posts about their competitors. While scammers often try to scam each other, the forums also have a sense of community. For example, users build reputations for being trustworthy, and forum owners organize writing contests.

“These are essentially social spaces. They really hate using other people [AI] on forums,” says Collier. He says the social dynamics of groups could be disturbed by potential cybercriminals trying to gain a better reputation by posting AI-generated hacking explainers. “I think a lot of them are a little ambivalent about AI because it undermines their claim to be a skilled person.”

Posts reviewed by WIRED on Hack Forums, a self-proclaimed space for those interested in hacking and sharing techniques, show the irritation caused by people creating posts with AI. One poster wrote, “I’ve noticed that a lot of members are using AI to create their threads/posts and it irritates me because they don’t even get time to write a simple sentence or two.” Another put it more bluntly: “Stop posting AI nonsense.”

In many instances, users of many forums seem to be irritated by AI posts because they want to make friends, Collier says. “If I want to talk to an AI chatbot, there are plenty of websites for me to do so… I come here for the human interaction,” one post cited in the research said.

Since ChatGPT emerged in late 2022, there has been significant interest in AI-hacking capabilities and how the technology could transform online crime. Both sophisticated hackers and less capable ones are attempting to use AI in their attacks. While some organized fraudsters have augmented their operations with more realistic AI face-swapping technology and social engineering messages translated using AI, much of the focus has been on the capabilities of generative AI to write malicious code and discover vulnerabilities.