18 Jul AI-powered terrorism to be outlawed under a Labour government
LABOUR plans to introduce legislation to ban recruitment by terrorist groups using AI chatbots, according to shadow security minister Holly Lynch.
She told GB News: “Unfortunately, the terrorist threat is not going away but we are seeing more and more threats here within the UK emanating from hostile states overseas. The resources that then come with that threat are really terrifying and actually the ability for terrorist organisations and hostile states to use AI for generating terrorist content for publication online is high.
“The ability to train AI chatbots to start to radicalise people online without the ability for another human being at the other end of the screen, is the other end of that conversation. These are some of the areas where we are really concerned that legislation and the powers that the security services and counterterrorism police have haven’t evolved at pace to be able to respond to some of those types of emerging threats that we are seeing present a risk to us here in the UK.”
In a discussion with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, she continued: “So we are expecting an update to Contest, which is the counterterrorism strategy that served as well as a country for the last 20 years the government’s going to do that tomorrow.
“What we think is missing from that strategy is a state threat equivalent. At the moment some of our legislation is targeted very much at terrorism, but where you’ve got groups like the threat emanating from Iran, the Revolutionary Guard, our security services, saying they’ve had to intervene on 15 separate occasions to disrupt kidnap and assassination attempts here in the UK since January 2022.
“These are some of the new ways that threats are presenting themselves here in the UK. Alongside that you have got this use of technology.
She added: “So whether it’s coming from a terrorist organisation or a hostile state, we need new powers to make sure that if somebody is committing these types of acts using chatbots generating terrorist content online using artificial intelligence, we are going to be looking at new offences to make sure those are captured by legislation.”
