Criminals Who Misuse AI Face Stiffer Sentences in DOJ Crackdown

The Justice Department’s No. 2 official is directing federal prosecutors to try imposing harsher penalties against criminals who’ve used AI to advance their misconduct.

“Going forward, where Department of Justice prosecutors can seek stiffer sentences for offenses made significantly more dangerous by the misuse of AI, they will,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Wednesday at the University of Oxford in the UK.

As the law develops in response to rapidly emerging generative technology, DOJ is already leveraging existing statutes to combat the harms of artificial intelligence in contexts such as election security, anti-discrimination, price fixing, and identity theft, Monaco ...