AI and Threat Intelligence: The Defenders’ Guide

AI is Reshaping Cybercrime

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a present-day force that’s being exploited by threat actors to scale attacks, manipulate perception, and erode trust with a precision and speed that simply wasn’t possible five years ago. With everything from deepfake-enabled fraud to multilingual phishing campaigns and jailbroken Large Language Models (LLMs), malicious innovation is rapidly advancing—and organizations must outpace it.

Flashpoint analysts track these developments in real-time across more than 100,000 illicit sources, monitoring everything from dark web marketplaces and Telegram groups to underground LLM communities. Between January 1 and May 30, 2025, we observed over two and a half a million AI-related posts: jailbreak prompts, deepfake service ads, phishing toolkits, and bespoke language models built for fraud and cybercrime.

As adversaries adopt AI to boost speed, deception, and reach, defenders face a profound new challenge: traditional methods alone can’t keep up. Defenders must understand how AI is being used against them, and how to turn it to their advantage.That’s why we have just released AI and Threat Intelligence: The Defenders’ Guide.

The Defender’s AI Advantage

For security and intelligence teams, the question isn’t just how AI is being used by threat actors, it’s how that activity changes their own risk assessments, workflows, and priorities.

Amid rising pressure to “use AI,” defenders are navigating a maze of assumptions, marketing promises, and misconceptions. The technology is moving fast, but so is the confusion around what it can (and can’t) do.

Flashpoint’s AI and Threat Intelligence: The Defenders’ Guide answers the following questions directly and clearly, grounded in what Flashpoint analysts are seeing everyday:

• What should cybersecurity leaders be asking themselves right now?
• Where does AI create real opportunity?
• Where does it introduce risk or operational blind spots?
• And how can defenders adopt AI without getting swept up in the hype?

Additionally, readers will explore:

• How today’s adversaries are actively experimenting with and operationalizing AI
• What effective AI-powered workflows look like in real-world threat detection and response
• The most persistent myths about AI in threat intelligence
• How experienced teams combine AI with analyst insight to accelerate decisions, without losing context

Outpacing Adversaries Using Flashpoint

In a threat landscape defined by speed and scale, the teams who combine both—intelligence and AI—will hold the advantage. Staying ahead doesn’t mean chasing every AI trend. It centers around pairing the scale of automation with the precision of analyst expertise. It’s about building on what already works, and making it stronger.

Traditional methods simply cannot keep up. Defenders must leverage AI to match adversary speed, automate triage, and extend analyst reach.

Download AI and Threat Intelligence: The Defenders’ Guide today to apply AI strategically using Flashpoint’s approach that is grounded in analyst workflows and customer outcomes.