{"slug": "gut-feeling-does-nothing-against-ai-spear-phishing-texts", "title": "Gut feeling does nothing against AI spear phishing texts", "summary": "A study presented at the 2026 USENIX Security Symposium found that AI-generated spear phishing texts are nearly indistinguishable from legitimate messages, with a credit union banker unable to identify a fake alert that mimicked the bank's own fraud notification. The research, led by scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, showed that human intuition is ineffective against AI-crafted phishing, highlighting the need for advanced detection tools.", "body_md": "A banker at a credit union sat down at a table with a dozen printed text messages, all of them written for that banker personally, and put them in order from the one most likely to get a click down to the one least likely. One of them stopped the sorting. It looked like something the bank sends out: “alert literally looks like the alert we get [at work] when there’s a fraud.” Half the … [More ](https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/08/07/ai-spear-phishing-research/)\n\nThe post [Gut feeling does nothing against AI spear phishing texts](https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/08/07/ai-spear-phishing-research/) appeared first on [Help Net Security](https://www.helpnetsecurity.com).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gut-feeling-does-nothing-against-ai-spear-phishing-texts", "canonical_source": "https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/08/07/ai-spear-phishing-research/", "published_at": "2026-08-07 04:00:11+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-09 09:43:07.406767+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-safety", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign", "USENIX Security Symposium", "Help Net Security"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gut-feeling-does-nothing-against-ai-spear-phishing-texts", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gut-feeling-does-nothing-against-ai-spear-phishing-texts.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gut-feeling-does-nothing-against-ai-spear-phishing-texts.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gut-feeling-does-nothing-against-ai-spear-phishing-texts.jsonld"}}