Terrorists historically have been quick to adopt emerging technology. Artificial intelligence is no exception. New research indicates that terrorist groups in Nigeria are using AI to plan and execute deadly attacks.
A report from Cambridge University, based on in-person interviews with dozens of former members of Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), revealed the extent to which the groups use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, Gemini, Grok and Meta AI for instructions and guidance.
“This AI use is institutionalized through specialized units and internal training,” said Antonia Juelich, a technology and terrorism researcher at Cambridge University who authored the study. “It has aided in attack planning, weapons troubleshooting, and the design of explosive devices, as users have successfully circumvented some safeguards.”
Islamic State group’s (IS) global core sent instructors from Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa and other regions to teach ISWAP commanders how to use AI. They supplied laptops with encryption software, set up subscription accounts and gave daily advice on techniques for making the most of the different platforms.
One technique called “jailbreaking” taught users how to bypass ethical and safety guidelines programmed into AI tools to prevent them from giving users information to make a pipe bomb, for example.
“Boys that have received extensive training […] bypass the restrictions. They say they need it for a movie or something like that,” an ISWAP commander told Juelich.
Graig Klein, a specialist in international terrorism at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said the Cambridge study supports his own work on terrorist groups’ use of AI.
“One of the big agreements that came out of it was that it’s less likely to lead to new forms of terrorism, or new types of attacks or brand new weapons,” he said. “But that it’s mostly that it’s a force multiplier — that it improves the capability that these groups have.”
Based on her interviews, Juelich estimates that ISWAP began using AI as early as 2023, just a few months after the release of ChatGPT in November 2022. She believes it’s part of a broader training and upskilling program pushed by the IS global leadership and warned that it’s unlikely that this has only happened in Nigeria.
“Because ISIS disseminates technical capabilities across its provinces and runs them as an integrated global network, similar training has likely reached other affiliates,” she wrote. “[Boko Haram] received parallel training through separate networks, indicating diffusion beyond any single group.”
Adonijah Ndege, a Nairobi-based reporter for the website TechCabal, said AI gives terrorists an advantage that researchers call an “uplift,” an improved outcome in capability and capacity that wouldn’t have occurred without the intervention.
“The immediate danger is not that AI turns amateur recruits into military geniuses,” he wrote in a September 3 article. “It is that an experienced organisation that has fought guerrilla warfare across borders becomes better at things it already knows how to do.”
For security agencies already grappling with asymmetrical warfare, counterterrorism is only getting more complex, as terrorists use AI for every stage of their operations — from planning to executing and reviewing. The future promises unknown dangers.
“There is nothing we haven’t received an answer on,” a former member of ISWAP told Juelich. “We believe it knows everything.”