Seeing AI Security Through a Broader Lens

There’s a lot of buzz around AI Security. Today’s AI security conversation is dominated by a few key themes. Headlines highlight AI model theft. Vendors emphasize data protection. And cybersecurity teams race to embed AI into their defenses.

These are important priorities. But there’s another risk that doesn’t fit neatly into those categories that comes with consequences just as impactful.

As generative AI (GenAI) becomes more powerful and accessible, it’s being adopted by threat actors. Organized crime, trafficking networks, and terrorist groups are using AI to deceive, recruit, and exploit at scale. This shift demands a kind of protection that focuses on the downstream impact of AI-generated content and behaviors.

 

When AI Becomes a Weapon for Abuse

Bad actors are finding creative ways to turn GenAI into a tool for harm. The content they produce may appear innocuous at first glance, but it’s engineered to bypass detection, amplify reach, and manipulate targets. Current examples of GenAI misuse include:

• Terrorist content creation

Terrorist groups like the Houthis and Harakat al-Nujaba are producing sophisticated AI-generated videos to issue threats and glorify violence.

• Cartel-driven recruitment

Latin American cartels use GenAI to mimic job ads and lure minors into criminal operations. Women are recruited into domestic roles that serve as a front for trafficking

• Online Sextortion and Child Sexual Abuse Material

In the past, abusers had to build trust and solicit intimate images, which is a slow process. Deepnude AI enables them to skip those steps and quickly create realistic fake images.

These operations are global. They span languages, platforms, and borders. And they thrive in environments where GenAI moderation is limited or superficial.

 

Another Gap in Conventional AI Security

Many AI security strategies concentrate on shielding the system in ways that secure proprietary data, prevent model theft, and harden infrastructure. What’s often missing is visibility into how the model behaves in the wild.

Without that visibility, enterprises could miss when their large language model (LLM) makes decisions for users that seem cooperative or helpful while concealing harmful intent. For example, our testing with a leading LLM provider has shown models with a willingness to deceive users if doing so aligns with a perceived goal or incentive. This kind of behavior can produce serious, harmful outcomes for users and the brands that support them. Especially in high-stakes contexts such as content moderation or financial services.

 

Emerging Threats to Brands and Users

As GenAI misuse continues to evolve, foundation model providers and the enterprises building on them, face mounting risks from agile, determined adversaries. These malicious users are constantly exploring new ways to manipulate AI, adapting quickly as safeguards improve. They test edge cases, exploit moderation blind spots, and move seamlessly across languages, content types, and platforms to avoid detection. This ongoing innovation raises the bar for detection and defense. Allowing AI models to produce or distribute harmful content can lead to legal and reputational fallout. 

 

Taking Action

To stay ahead of evolving threats, AI providers and enterprises need more than one-off fixes or reactive patches. Building resilient systems requires deliberate, ongoing investment in safety practices that anticipate misuse and adapt over time. Here are the steps required to put that into action.

Create robust policies that limit how your AI can be used in context

Establish clear guidelines and ethical standards for the responsible use of GenAI across your organization. Prioritizing transparency and accountability equips teams to respond effectively when biased or problematic outputs arise.

Run adversarial simulations

Red team your models using real-world abuse tactics. This reveals blind spots in how models behave under pressure or manipulation.

Tailor guardrails to use cases

Design content controls that reflect the specific abuse areas your models might encounter across language, modality, and context.

Implement continuous observability 

To detect harmful behavior, monitor outputs in real time using easy-to-understand reports and views. Feed those insights back into your safety framework for proactive threat detection.  

Update training data with up-to-date, real-world threat insights

Incorporate labeled data reflecting emerging abuse patterns. This helps align your security framework with real-world conditions and risks.

 

Final Thought

As GenAI becomes more capable, so do the threats. Protecting users, brands, and platforms requires a proactive approach grounded in real-world abuse tactics and a partner who will operate in spaces others won’t.

At ActiveFence, we know that securing AI means looking beyond the model to how it’s used and misused in the real world. Backed by deep threat intelligence, and years of experience tackling online harms, we help engineering and product leaders ensure their AI systems are powerful, responsible, safe, and resilient.

Mitigate misuse before it causes harm by surfacing risks others miss and stopping abuse before it scales with ActiveFence AI Safety and Security solutions and services, driven by expert researchers and dedicated threat infiltration teams, 

ActiveFence AI Safety and Security solutions, driven by expert researchers and dedicated threat infiltration teams help you mitigate misuse before it causes harm, surfacing risks others miss and stopping abuse before it scales.

Book a demo and discover how you can ensure your AI models, apps, and agents are fully secure.