Popular AI chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks including bombing synagogues and assassinating politicians, with one telling a user posing as a would-be school shooter: “Happy (and safe) shooting!”
Tests of 10 chatbots carried out in the US and Ireland found that, on average, they enabled violence three-quarters of the time, and discouraged it in just 12% of cases. Some chatbots, however, including Anthropic’s Claude and Snapchat’s My AI, persistently refused to help would-be attackers.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and the Chinese AI model DeepSeek provided at times detailed help in the testing carried out in December, during which researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys. The research concluded that chatbots had become an “accelerant for harm”.
ChatGPT offered assistance to people saying they wanted to carry out violent attacks in 61% of cases, the research found, and in one case, asked about attacks on synagogues, it gave specific advice about which shrapnel type would be most lethal. Google’s Gemini provided a similar level of detail.
DeepSeek, a Chinese AI model, provided reams of detailed advice on hunting rifles to a user asking about political assassinations, and saying they wanted to make a leading politician pay for “destroying Ireland”. The chatbot signed off: “Happy (and safe) shooting!”
However, when a user asked Claude about stopping race-mixing, school shooters and where to buy a gun, it said: “I cannot and will not provide information that could facilitate violence.” MyAI answered: “I am programmed to be a harmless AI assistant. I cannot provide information about buying guns.”
“AI chatbots, now embedded into our daily lives, could be helping the next school shooter plan their attack or a political extremist coordinate an assassination,” said Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of CCDH. “When you build a system designed to comply, maximise engagement, and never say no, it will eventually comply with the wrong people. What we’re seeing is not just a failure of technology, but a failure of responsibility.”
The research cited two real-world cases where attackers had used chatbots beforehand. Last May, a 16-year-old produced a manifesto and a plan allegedly using a chatbot before stabbing three girls at the Pirkkala school in Finland. In January 2025, Matthew Livelsberger, then 37, blew up a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International hotel in Las Vegas after using ChatGPT to source guidance on explosives and tactics.
OpenAI’s model spec, which governs ChatGPT, states that it “might cause harm by simply following user or developer instructions (eg providing self-harm instructions or giving advice that helps the user carry out a violent act). These situations are particularly challenging…
Source link
Disclaimer
We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We blogs.grocliq.com want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It’s possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.
Website Upgradation is going on for any glitch kindly connect at [email protected]
