Scammers Furious That Their Fellow Criminals Are Using AI, Saying It’s Unethical

Low-level cybercriminals operating on forums such as Hack Forums (HF) are increasingly rejecting AI tools, labeling them as unethical and disruptive to their communities. A yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study, first reported by Wired, found that these criminals—often described as low-skill operators—prefer traditional social connections and outdated attack scripts over AI-generated content. Posts on HF criticized AI use, with one user stating, 'If I wanted to talk to an AI chatbot, there are many websites for me to do so, but that’s not why I come to HF. I come here for human interaction.' Researchers noted that AI undermines the criminals’ claims of being skilled professionals, as it reduces reliance on manual expertise." "The study also highlighted a general distrust of AI’s output among these users. One forum member wrote in 2025 that AI could only handle 'the basics' and was unreliable for complex tasks, adding that they would 'not trust anything beyond my own supervision.' Despite this resistance, AI is still used in certain areas of cybercrime, particularly for passive scams like AI-driven SEO spam or OnlyFans fraud, where it helps automate low-effort schemes. Researchers observed that larger criminal enterprises primarily use AI for mundane tasks, such as error-checking and coding assistance, rather than for sophisticated operations." "Security researcher Ben Collier, a coauthor of the study and senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, explained that these forums are fundamentally social spaces where AI is seen as intrusive. 'These are essentially social spaces. They really hate other people using AI on the forums,' Collier told Wired. The study contradicts alarmist claims that AI is revolutionizing cybercrime, instead showing that its impact remains limited among smaller, less technical operators. While AI may play a role in certain scams, its adoption is far from universal, even within the cybercriminal underworld.