"Cybercrime has entered its AI era, with criminals now using weaponized language models and deepfakes as cheap, off-the-shelf infrastructure rather than experimental tools, according to researchers at Group-IB. In its latest whitepaper, the cybersec biz argues that AI has become the plumbing of modern cybercrime, quietly turning skills that once took time and talent into services that anyone with a credit card and a Telegram account can rent."
"One of the uglier trends in the report is the rise of so-called Dark LLMs - self-hosted language models built for scams and malware rather than polite conversation. Group-IB says several vendors are already selling them for as little as $30 a month, with more than 1,000 users between them. Unlike jailbroken mainstream chatbots, these things are meant to stay out of sight, run behind Tor, and ignore safety rules by design."
Criminals now use weaponized language models and deepfakes as cheap, off-the-shelf infrastructure rather than experimental tools. AI has turned specialized cyber skills into rentable services accessible with a credit card and a Telegram account. Mentions of AI on dark web forums rose 371% since 2019, with replies increasing almost twelvefold; AI-related threads generated over 23,000 new posts and nearly 300,000 replies in 2025. Attack stages that once required planning and specialists are automated into subscription services with SaaS-style pricing and packaging. Dark LLMs and synthetic identity kits lower barriers to scams, with deepfake fraud causing hundreds of millions in verified losses in a single quarter.
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