Axel Legay - When AI Meets Cybersecurity: Autonomous Defense or Emerging Threat?

When AI Meets Cybersecurity: Autonomous Defense or Emerging Threat?

Introduction

The convergence of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity is reshaping the digital battlefield. Where cybersecurity was once a field dominated by manual configuration, human vigilance, and static rule sets, AI introduces an adaptive, data-driven, and partially autonomous dimension to digital defense. But this transformation comes with a paradox: the same AI models that protect systems are now being used to compromise them. The line between defender and attacker has never been thinner, nor the tools more symmetric.

AI as a Defensive Asset

Artificial intelligence today plays a central role in enabling organizations to detect threats in real-time, to react faster than human teams ever could, and to anticipate attack paths before they are exploited. It analyzes vast streams of network activity, learns the normal behaviors of users and systems, and flags anomalies that would otherwise go unnoticed. This behavior-based threat detection marks a profound shift away from traditional signature-based models. Rather than waiting for an identified malware hash, AI learns what is typical — and highlights the atypical.

This shift enables incident response systems to act autonomously. In modern security operations centers, AI does not merely generate alerts. It can isolate infected devices, disable compromised accounts, and even suggest or execute remediation steps without human intervention. These capabilities are revolutionizing threat containment, shrinking the window between detection and response, and offering a glimpse into what a real-time cyber defense might look like at scale.

Furthermore, AI enables proactive security strategies. By predicting where vulnerabilities are likely to be exploited, security teams can prioritize patching based on real-time threat intelligence rather than guesswork. This capacity for prediction transforms cybersecurity from a reactive discipline into a preemptive one.

AI as an Attack Vector

But AI is not a shield alone — it is also a sword. Threat actors now use the same technologies to enhance their attacks. With access to large language models, attackers craft phishing messages that are grammatically perfect, psychologically convincing, and personalized using publicly available data. These messages no longer contain the telltale signs of poor language or generic content. They are indistinguishable from legitimate communication.

More dangerously, AI is powering the next generation of malware. Malicious code can now be generated, obfuscated, and adapted by AI systems. Malware can evolve during its lifecycle, altering its structure to evade detection, avoiding sandboxes, and learning how to survive in hostile environments. We are witnessing the emergence of polymorphic, AI-generated threats that behave like living organisms — flexible, evasive, and persistent.

Social engineering, once dependent on human deception, has also entered a new phase. Deepfakes allow for real-time impersonation of voices and faces. Synthetic media makes it possible to simulate executives issuing orders, IT administrators requesting credentials, or colleagues making urgent requests. Trust, once verified by human familiarity, is now exploitable by synthetic precision.

Legal and Ethical Tensions

This convergence raises major ethical and legal questions. Who is responsible when an AI-driven system makes a catastrophic security decision? If an autonomous model disables a critical service or misclassifies a threat, is the liability on the vendor, the developer, or the deploying organization? The lack of transparency in complex AI models — often referred to as the black-box problem — undermines accountability. Legal systems are not yet equipped to deal with the consequences of non-human decision-making in high-risk security contexts.

Moreover, there is a growing debate about the regulation of offensive AI capabilities. Should AI-generated malware be considered a cyber weapon? Can we regulate access to AI models that are openly available, but weaponized through context? While the European Union's AI Act provides a framework for risk-based regulation, it largely omits the offensive use of AI in cybersecurity. This regulatory blind spot will become increasingly problematic as state and non-state actors race to gain algorithmic superiority.

Human Oversight Remains Central

Despite the risks, AI should not be seen as a replacement for human experts. Cybersecurity remains, at its core, a human discipline — strategic, contextual, and ethical. AI enhances the analyst’s capacity but cannot replicate judgment, accountability, or foresight. It automates routine detection, prioritizes alerts, and reveals patterns. But it cannot determine policy, assess geopolitical context, or handle crisis response in a complex, ambiguous environment.

We are not moving toward fully autonomous cybersecurity, but rather toward an era of AI-augmented defense. The future belongs to hybrid systems where machine speed meets human oversight. The security teams of tomorrow will not be replaced by algorithms, but empowered by them — provided they remain in control.

Conclusion

Artificial intelligence has already transformed the threat landscape. It empowers defenders with precision and scale, but it also equips attackers with tools of unprecedented sophistication. The real question is not whether AI is good or bad for cybersecurity. The real question is whether we — as researchers, engineers, policymakers, and citizens — are ready to govern it wisely. Because the fight is no longer about access to data, or even talent. It is about control of the algorithms themselves.