How Generative AI Empowers Attackers and Defenders Across the Trust & Safety Landscape

TL;DR

GenAI reshapes Trust & Safety by enabling faster, larger-scale attacker operations and creating new defensive capabilities. It uses six-hour participatory workshops with 43 experts across five domains to elicit current and anticipated GenAI impacts. Key findings highlight a dual-use landscape: GenAI accelerates harm while also offering scalable tools for detection, investigations, and support, with domain-specific differences. The work provides a strategic framework and concrete guidance for responsible GenAI integration to strengthen safety online.

Abstract

Generative AI (GenAI) is a powerful technology poised to reshape Trust & Safety. While misuse by attackers is a growing concern, its defensive capacity remains underexplored. This paper examines these effects through a qualitative study with 43 Trust & Safety experts across five domains: child safety, election integrity, hate and harassment, scams, and violent extremism. Our findings characterize a landscape in which GenAI empowers both attackers and defenders. GenAI dramatically increases the scale and speed of attacks, lowering the barrier to entry for creating harmful content, including sophisticated propaganda and deepfakes. Conversely, defenders envision leveraging GenAI to detect and mitigate harmful content at scale, conduct investigations, deploy persuasive counternarratives, improve moderator wellbeing, and offer user support. This work provides a strategic framework for understanding GenAI's impact on Trust & Safety and charts a path for its responsible use in creating safer online environments.

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• Figure 1: Futuring Card, Change Card, and Memorable Experience Card, clockwise from upperleft.