Cybersecurity In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence – Who Should Be Culpable?

Abstract

The age of the AI has come in hurtling and it has become difficult for law makers to keep pace. At the same time, unbridled by legislations, criminals in the cyber space are using these Artificial Intelligence tools. The instances of ChatGPT’s use in writing academic articles to morphing pictures of people, the degree of seriousness is high. Another incident was the use of morphed pictures of a celebrity couple’s child for disseminating fake news. The lines of reality and morphed is blurring to an extent that the line is very unclear and hence it is essential that proper laws are put in place to identify and assign culpability to the use of AI for criminal activities. Although the AI applications are guided by moral codes, the said moral codes would be guided by the developer’s morals and hence the question of standardized laws, ethics and morals would arise here. While the debate around AI and intellectual property rights have been on the round for some time and Courts in certain jurisdictions have already deliberated on it, the question has shifted to criminal culpability in case of hacking, creation of photos that falsify evidence, publication of pictures of individuals that have been digitally altered via AI, etc. The question that arises is who is in control of the actions of the AI, since the creator of the AI is not always the person who is involved in criminal activities that are affected through the AI. Also, would a standard code of ethics be able to govern the AI’s functioning successfully?