David Wells
Over the past three years, regional, national, and international governments have repeatedly raised concerns that the misuse of Generative AI (Gen AI) could have a significant impact on the capabilities of terrorists and violent extremists (TVEs). These warnings have not been without foundation. Multiple TVE groups and actors have experimented with Gen AI technologies, primarily to optimise or enhance existing activities and processes.
However, despite these warnings and extensive coverage of these TVE Gen AI experiments, its adoption to date has remained largely ad hoc and experimental. As a result, if Gen AI’s overall impact on the terrorist landscape to date remains hard to define, it is difficult to argue that it has been transformative.
This Insight will outline the slow, piecemeal adoption of Gen AI by TVE actors, and try to characterise the relatively limited impact of this adoption. It will then assess some of the factors behind the rate of adoption, including by contrasting this with the adoption of Gen AI by Serious and Organised criminals (SOC), and exploring factors that impact terrorist adoption of new technologies. In doing so, it aims to help chart a course towards a better understanding of any potential future expansion in TVE Gen AI use, before concluding with brief recommendations for government and private sector actors relating to this activity.
Cases of TVE Gen AI Use
There have been several clear-cut examples of Gen AI use by TVE actors. These include a wide range of propaganda-related activities, with the Islamic State Khorasan Province’s use of AI-generated news bulletins to claim high-profile attacks in March and May 2024 being particularly noteworthy. Other TVE actors have used Gen AI to create imagery and videos, including the re-packaging or translation of materials from ISIL’s weekly newspaper al-Naba. However, most of this activity has originated from ISIL supporters, not official ISIL accounts. Similarly, although pro-Al Qa’ida accounts have discussed or promoted the use of Gen AI, there have only been isolated examples of AI-generated Al Qa’ida activity.
In contrast, AI-generated propaganda has been more widespread among the far-right violent extremist milieu, with AI-generated imagery and videos being used to support anti-immigration narratives in Italy, Germany, France and Ireland. However, a recent analysis highlighting Grok’s use by the UK far-right showed that between January and May 2025, Gen AI content only featured in around 2% of posts on X by a range of UK far-right groups and personalities.
Finally, there are emerging examples of how Gen AI has been exploited to support offline violence. These include its role in the planning of a January 2025 incident in Las Vegas in which an individual died by suicide in an explosion; the use of Gen AI by the 16-year old responsible for a school stabbing in Pirkkala, Finland in May 2025 to draft his manifesto and to prepare for the attack; and a June 2025 incident in New York, where an individual arrested for throwing an IED onto subway tracks in New York claimed that he had “used AI” to assist in its creation.
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