Far-right extremists are using livestream gaming platforms to target and radicalise teenage players, a report has warned. The new research, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, reveals how a range of extremist groups and individuals use platforms that allow users to chat and livestream while playing video games to recruit and radicalise vulnerable users, mainly young males. UK crime and counter-terror agencies have urged parents to be especially alert to online offenders targeting youngsters during the summer holidays. In an unprecedented move, last week Counter Terrorism Policing, MI5 and the National Crime Agency issued a joint warning to parents and carers that online offenders "will exploit the school holidays to engage in criminal acts with young people when they know less support is readily available". Dr William Allchorn, a senior research fellow at Anglia Ruskin University's international policing and public protection research institute, who carried out the study with his colleague Dr Elisa Orofino, said "gaming-adjacent" platforms were being used as "digital playgrounds" for extremist activity.

As a former military intelligence officer, serving in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), I tracked foreign threats to the U.S. homeland, identifying adversaries' plans, intentions and capabilities that could harm Americans. I predicted Russia's invasion of Ukraine more than a year before it took place. In March, in my Fox News Digital article titled "Ignore FBI director's urgent warning about terrorist threats at our own peril," I predicted terrorist attacks striking inside the U.S. homeland, the kind that took place on New Year's Day in New Orleans and in Las Vegas. Here are the top three reasons why we will likely face more terrorism in America this year. This time, it will be something we haven't seen before.

Using a series of prompts six days before he died by suicide outside the main entrance of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, Matthew Livelsberger, a highly decorated US Army Green Beret from Colorado, consulted with an artificial intelligence on the best ways to turn a rented Cybertruck into a four-ton vehicle-borne explosive. According to documents obtained exclusively by WIRED, US intelligence analysts have been issuing warnings about this precise scenario over the past year--and among their concerns are that AI tools could be used by racially or ideologically motivated extremists to target critical infrastructure, in particular the power grid. "We knew that AI was going to change the game at some point or another in, really, all of our lives," Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department told reporters on Tuesday. Copies of his exchanges with OpenAI's ChatGPT show that Livelsberger, 37, pursued information on how to amass as much explosive material as he legally could while en route to Las Vegas, as well as how best to set it off using the Desert Eagle gun discovered in the Cybertruck following his death. Screenshots shared by McMahill's office reveal Livelsberger prompting ChatGPT for information on Tannerite, a reactive compound typically used for target practice.

Extremists across the US have weaponized artificial intelligence tools to help them spread hate speech more efficiently, recruit new members, and radicalize online supporters at an unprecedented speed and scale, according to a new report from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an American non-profit press monitoring organization. The report found that AI-generated content is now a mainstay of extremists' output: They are developing their own extremist-infused AI models, and are already experimenting with novel ways to leverage the technology, including producing blueprints for 3D weapons and recipes for making bombs. Researchers at the Domestic Terrorism Threat Monitor, a group within the institute which specifically tracks US-based extremists, lay out in stark detail the scale and scope of the use of AI among domestic actors, including neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and anti-government extremists. "There initially was a bit of hesitation around this technology and we saw a lot of debate and discussion among [extremists] online about whether this technology could be used for their purposes," Simon Purdue, director of the Domestic Terrorism Threat Monitor at MEMRI, told reporters in a briefing earlier this week. "In the last few years we've gone from seeing occasional AI content to AI being a significant portion of hateful propaganda content online, particularly when it comes to video and visual propaganda. So as this technology develops, we'll see extremists use it more."

In more recent years, various Western players touting tech trends like artificial intelligence and predictive analysis have swooped in with promises to solve the region's myriad problems. But Garbal--named after the word for a livestock market in the language of the Fulani, an ethnic group that makes up the majority of the Sahel's herders--aims to do things differently. Building on an approach pioneered by a 37-year-old American data scientist named Alex Orenstein, Garbal is focused on how humbler technologies might effectively support the 80% of Nigeriens who live off livestock and the land. "There's still this idea of'How can we use new tech?' But the tech is already there--we just need to be more intentional in applying it," Orenstein says, arguing that donor enthusiasm for shiny, complex solutions is often misplaced.

Human Rights Watch said Thursday that Burkina Faso's security forces last year killed at least 60 civilians in three different drone strikes, which the group says may have constituted war crimes. The West African nation's government claimed the strikes targeted extremists, including jihadi fighters and rebel groups that have been operating in many remote communities. The accusation by the New York-based watchdog were the latest in a string of similar charges raised by various rights groups. "The government should urgently and impartially investigate these apparent war crimes, hold those responsible to account, and provide adequate support for the victims and their families," HRW said in a new report. A mural is seen in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on March 1, 2023.

Law-enforcement investigations aimed at preventing attacks by violent extremists have become increasingly important for public safety. The problem is exacerbated by the massive data volumes that need to be scanned to identify complex behaviors of extremists and groups. Automated tools are required to extract information to respond queries from analysts, continually scan new information, integrate them with past events, and then alert about emerging threats. We address challenges in investigative pattern detection and develop an Investigative Pattern Detection Framework for Counterterrorism (INSPECT). The framework integrates numerous computing tools that include machine learning techniques to identify behavioral indicators and graph pattern matching techniques to detect risk profiles/groups. INSPECT also automates multiple tasks for large-scale mining of detailed forensic biographies, forming knowledge networks, and querying for behavioral indicators and radicalization trajectories. INSPECT targets human-in-the-loop mode of investigative search and has been validated and evaluated using an evolving dataset on domestic jihadism.

Artificial intelligence chatbots could soon groom extremists into launching terrorist attacks, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has warned. Jonathan Hall KC told The Mail on Sunday that bots like ChatGPT could easily be programmed, or even decide by themselves, to spread terrorist ideologies to vulnerable extremists, adding that'AI-enabled attacks are probably round the corner'. Mr Hall also warned that if an extremist is groomed by a chatbot to carry out a terrorist atrocity, or if AI is used to instigate one, it may be difficult to prosecute anybody, as Britain's counter-terrorism legislation has not caught up with the new technology. Mr Hall said: 'I believe it is entirely conceivable that AI chatbots will be programmed – or, even worse, decide – to propagate violent extremist ideology. 'But when ChatGPT starts encouraging terrorism, who will there be to prosecute?

With the rapid growth of Web 3.0 – defined as a decentralised form of the Internet where people have complete control over their own data, more transparency, and far more content accessible to users – human communication will become far easier. Technologies that will facilitate this change include the combination of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and blockchain that will be central pillars of the third version of the Internet. The metaverse, therefore – is a product of Web 3.0, incorporating emerging technologies including augmented reality and allowing users to spend far more time in a virtual world where they can live, work, play, and worship. EMAN has been increasing its focus on the role of extremism in tech and how hate speech and online extremism will evolve as the Internet undergoes significant changes as we know it today. Despite the fact that these metaverses act as efficient socialising tools, global companies are already adapting themselves to this concept by developing new business visions that simulate this new Internet innovation.

American journalist Spencer Ackerman, in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, just released a document related to the US drone operations leaked by National Security Agency whistleblower, Edward Snowden. The document is an article on Intellipedia, a secretive US data site where the US intelligence agencies share the material they mine on us all across the world. Titled "Targeted Killing: Policy, Legal and Ethical Controversy", the entry reflects Intellipedia's take on the work of many human rights defenders and organisations – including my own – to stop the CIA drone war across the world. Because of my human rights work, I have always assumed that I was being tracked by security agencies. Indeed, when I write an email to my wife, I sometimes add an ironic post-script to their agents apologising for being boring.