Google researchers have found the first-of-its-kind evidence of the most serious and dangerous type of security flaw created by hackers through artificial intelligence.
The team from Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) reported on Monday that the cyber criminals are misusing cutting-edge AI models to create a zero-day exploit.
According to the researchers, this is the most concerning flaw as it remains invisible despite being present. Even software engineers cannot figure out its existence in the systems.
“For the first time, GTIG has identified a threat actor using a zero-day exploit that we believe was developed with AI,” the researchers wrote in a report.
“The criminal threat actor planned to use it in a mass exploitation event but our proactive counter discovery may have prevented its use.”
As per researchers findings, hackers belonging to North Korea and China pose serious threats by creating zero-day cyber vulnerabilities with the help of AI.
This report highlights growing misuse of AI at the hands of cyber criminals, leading to a record-breaking surge in cyber attacks in 2026 alone.
According to another report, over the last year, AI bots-driven attacks have increased more than 10 fold, surging from 2 million to 25 million incidents across the world.
In the competitive tech landscape, tech giants are racing to build state-of-the-art models. For instance, in March, Anthropic unveiled the Mythos model, capable enough to detect unprecedented vulnerabilities not only in software but also in browsers.
But researchers warned that hackers are using such powerful models for nefarious purposes on a formidable scale.
“Threat actors now pursue anonymized, premium tier access to models through professionalized middleware and automated registration pipelines to illicitly bypass usage limits,” they warned.
As a result of exploitation, the models allow rogue actors to carry out misuse of services at a broader scale “while subsidizing operations through trial abuse and programmatic account cycling.”
