Researchers warn generative tools are helping militant groups from neo-Nazis to the Islamic State spread ideology
W
hile the artificial intelligence boom is upending sections of the music industry, voice generating bots are also becoming a boon to another unlikely corner of the internet: extremist movements that are using them to recreate the voices and speeches of major figures in their milieu, and experts say it is helping them grow.
“The adoption of AI-enabled translation by terrorists and extremists marks a significant evolution in digital propaganda strategies,” said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism and a research fellow at the Soufan Center. Webber specializes in monitoring the online tools of terrorist groups and extremists around the world.
“Earlier methods relied on human translators or rudimentary machine translation, often limited by language fidelity and stylistic nuance,” he said. “Now, with the rise of advanced generative AI tools, these groups are able to produce seamless, contextually accurate translations that preserve tone, emotion, and ideological intensity across multiple languages.”
