Artificial Intelligence-Driven Cybercrime: Emerging Threats and Implications for Digital Security Governance (Published)
This article examines artificial intelligence-driven cybercrime as an emerging threat to digital security governance, with particular focus on AI-enabled phishing, deepfakes and automated cyberattacks. The study argues that artificial intelligence has transformed cybercrime by increasing the speed, scale, realism and sophistication of digital offences. AI tools can generate convincing phishing messages, clone voices, create deepfake videos, automate vulnerability scanning and support large-scale social engineering attacks. These developments create serious challenges for cybercrime law, digital evidence, institutional cybersecurity and public trust. The article adopts a doctrinal and analytical approach by reviewing legal frameworks, cybercrime literature and emerging AI governance responses. It finds that existing cybercrime laws provide an important foundation for addressing fraud, identity theft, unauthorised access and data misuse, but they may not fully respond to the distinctive risks created by synthetic identities, AI-generated deception and automated attacks. The study further shows that deepfakes complicate digital evidence by weakening the reliability of audio, image and video materials, while AI-enabled phishing increases the vulnerability of individuals and organisations to fraud. The article concludes with recommendations that AI-driven cybercrime should be addressed through a broader digital security governance framework. This requires stronger cybercrime laws, improved digital forensic capacity, organisational cybersecurity controls, international cooperation, platform responsibility and rights-sensitive AI regulation. The study contributes to legal research by showing that AI-driven cybercrime is not only a technical problem but also a legal, institutional and governance challenge.
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Cybercrime, Phishing, automated attacks, cybersecurity law, deepfakes, digital security governance