- Scientists compared spam before the gpt era with those who came after
- Most spam messages today are AI-Generated
- BEC -E -Mails require more precision
The majority of spam -e emails sent today are written by generative artificial intelligence (Genai), new research has claimed.
A report from Barracuda has claimed that cyber criminals do not use AI to change their attacking tactics, but rather to refine them and make them more difficult to spot.
The study compared E emails sent before the advent of chatgpt (before -November 2022), with those who were sent after, noting a significant change -namely criminal user mostly Genai in spam.
Increased credibility
In April 2025, 51% of spam -e emails were generated by an AI, rather than a human, they decided.
“The majority of the e emails currently sitting in the average junk/spam folder have probably been written by a large language model (LLM),” they explained
On the other hand, criminals do not appear to be so eager to use AI in Business E -Mail -Compromis (BEC). According to the researchers, these types of attacks involve precision and typically targets a senior person in an organization. As a result, in April 2025, only 14% of BEC attacks were generated by an AI.
As one would expect, AI-Generated Messages are better written. They have a higher level of formality, fewer grammar errors and greater linguistic sophistication. Therefore, they seem more credible and professionals to the victims and increase the likelihood of them falling prey.
It also means that Cyberattackers, whose mother tongue is not English, will have an easier time targeting companies in English -speaking countries. Finally, Crooks looks to use AI for A/B-Test different spam variants and try to determine which wording variations work better in real life environments.
The best way to defend against AI-generated spam messages is with AI-driven email security solutions. In the pre-gpt era you could see phishing and spam by simply proofreading the email-theses messages was usually filled with spelling and grammar failure, while the language was raw and out of character most of the time.
As AI eliminated these red flags, an advanced email security solution, equipped with multi-layer, AI/ML-enabled detection, is “crucial”, the researchers concluded.
