AI-assisted Email Phishing Market: Local AI Models Make Phishing Emails More Dangerous

Researchers at TU Berlin, Inria and Ruhr-University Bochum report that small, local AI language models substantially increase phishing effectiveness by producing highly personalized emails. In controlled tests, successful attack rates rose from about 4% to roughly 10% after AI-based personalization, and an email security system flagged only one of nearly 4,000 AI-generated messages. The study shows how lightweight models can automate tailored social engineering at scale. Interpol has warned that cybercriminals increasingly use AI to automate phishing campaigns, create deepfakes and fake identities, and evade traditional signature-based defenses. The article summarizing the findings was published on t3n by Wolfgang Stieler in August 2026.