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back to article Google unleashes Gemini AI agents on the dark web

Google's Gemini AI agents are crawling the dark web, sifting through upward of 10 million posts a day to find a handful of threats relevant to a particular organization. Available now in public preview, the dark web intelligence service built into Google Threat Intelligence uses Gemini's models to build a profile of a user's …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google lying to customers

    > "We are now processing every post from the dark web using Gemini, and from there distilling down what threats actually matter,"

    No. So much of the deepest reaches of the darkweb is account-gated, often in a way that AI agents (and even humans) just can't instantly get access to.

    The customers mislead by this crap have no idea that, even if Google is parsing every public post on the darkweb, public posts are only a sliver of the total darkweb -- and probably not the sliver they should be most worried about.

    1. brainwrong Bronze badge

      Re: Google lying to customers

      I thought that claim looked like bollocks, too. Maybe it's accessing theonion.com rather than .onion addresses.

    2. DS999 Silver badge

      Isn't it honeypotted in multiple levels?

      At least that's what I've read from those in the know - getting access to the real real stuff versus the poser stuff or the honeypot stuff those doing the real real leave out to fool the authorities likely takes a lot more doing than a glorified webcrawler will be able to achieve!

      Worse, those gating such places might have "tests" in place to judge the worthiness of an applicant, and if they fool AI into writing a lot of malware (or committing actual crimes) it is normally prevented (or at least they try to prevent it) from writing that would be a tremendous own goal for Google!

    3. Kurgan Silver badge

      Re: Google lying to customers

      But if they hammer every dark web server as they do to "non-dark" web ones, AI agents can probably DDOS the whole dark web, too.

    4. Andy The Hat

      Re: Google lying to customers

      Unless they are analysing encrypted data transiting through systems somehow ...

      That would indeed be a boon for criminal enforcement agencies, spies and dictators but terrible for every legitimate internet user on the planet ...

    5. steviebuk Silver badge

      Re: Google lying to customers

      Lying to investors more like it.

  2. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

    So ... How is this Supposed to Work?

    Ignoring the word salad from Product Manager Wood, Google's LLM will, for example, know that their client BigBling, Inc., has about €5million in inventory, and that their store is in City X, and that dark-net posts indicate the SmashNGrabbers ransomware group attacked three other bling-sellers whose inventories were worth about €5M each in City X, and so conclude BigBling, Inc. is at heightened risk of attack.

    Huzzah.

    Problem is, LLMs are infamously bad at math.

    So how was this system supposed to work?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So ... How is this Supposed to Work?

      "So how was this system supposed to work?"

      It isn't. At least the way they *say* it will work. Patentable assholes, as usual.

      It will transfer money from stupid buyers to Google and for *that*, it *will work well*.

  3. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    Amazing claims

    For a company with so many exploited web applications. It takes Google 3 to 12 months to fix exploited features so there's always at least one being abused at any moment. Gmail servers are attempting to blast me with spam right now, and that spam is not even tied to Google accounts.

  4. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Re: Unleashing Gemini AI agents/crawlers in/for Government Admin Newspeak Systems

    Given that news, one can imagine the BBC are in for a long overdue shakeup and old guard clearout should ex Google boss chap, Matt Brittin, take the helm and be up to the job, for surely, and such is an absolute and vital and viral necessity, he can see the corporation rot and mass mainstream media model malfunction that has it not leading the way to future riches growing economies.

    Anything less than a fundamental and radically novel overhaul and return back to the future when "Nation shall speak peace unto Nation” reigns supreme and almighty is not going to cut it and prevent an ever increasingly rapid terminal decline in influence and remote virtual brainwashing power ..... so no small step for [a] man and giant Quantum Communications leap for mankind.

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: Unleashing Gemini AI agents/crawlers in/for Government Admin Newspeak Systems

      And do not be fooled if ever advised that such as be long overdue shakeups and old guard clearouts will be difficult and nigh on impossible to do for such is in fact surprisingly simple to do nowadays in these strangest of postmodern times and phantom remote virtual space places when and where nothing is as it seems and everything can be changed with just the smallest of nuggets of unpleasant truths revealed and self-destructively dangerous and impossible to deny.

      Even the most massive of changes only needs one to know and share the dark information and secret intelligence which is missing with a few, who then can easily explosively grow to be the many, and along with simple instruction on what needs to be done and how to do it is the present changed in an instant with the future then being relatively autonomously redirected and presented by forces and sources completely different from the past for a Brave New Dawning World full of Exciting Unknown Opportunity and Vast Unimagined Reward and ....... well, NEUKlearly HyperRadioProACTive Alien Surprise too should you want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

      And with the help of GOD [Global Operating Devices] is that guaranteed an easily possible dawdle. I Kid U Not. And such is what is terrifying the status quo, which is totally unprepared for and being forced to attack and defend itself against to a whole host of newly invented phantom enemies with weapons and systems never known about before in novel viral and virile virtualised spaces with proposals and actions which are rapidly ensuring their demise?

      And shared there as a question for you to ask yourself ..... Is that really happening and the present future state of Greater IntelAIgent Games Play ?

  5. Always Right Mostly

    "Google deeply cares about protecting user information."

    HAHAHAHAHAHABULLSHITHAHAHAHA.

    1. ChoHag Silver badge

      No, they really do care.

      They care about being the only ones to have it.

  6. Sil

    Dangerous?

    Doesn't seem safe.

    How exactly does the system verify that the client is who it claims to be ? Could become a great tool to search for vulnerabilities into competitors / targets.

  7. Briantist69

    "Google unleashes Gemini AI agents on the dark web"

    I thought the definition of "dark web" was "web sites that Google didn't index"?

    1. EnviableOne Silver badge

      nah that got re-classifed as the deep web

  8. Purity Vendetta

    Google, the company who's entire business model is data scraping, illegally selling data and running scam adverts.

    I'm sorry but I can't help but ridicule the mere notion that Google has or will ever have any intention to be a force for food. As for it's Gemini AI, I very much doubt to could find it's way around a wet paper bag.

    Google are bad actors and compulsive liars.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    1M*0,02 = 20 000 *false alerts* per day ... for each million in those "millions of posts". That's about 13 alerts per minute, 24/7.

    Good luck for anyone stupid enough to buy this shit.

  10. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Neuromancer

    > Google's Gemini AI agents are crawling the dark web

    It reports back: there is another system

  11. geospacedman

    Accuracy paradox

    What's this "98% accuracy" codswallop? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_paradox FFS Google take a basic epidemiology stats class.

  12. Juliet Bravo Bravo

    Inventing Reality?

    I wonder if Google—notorious for acquiring technology, purchasing regulatory assurances from their cronies in Congress, and then weaponizing it against end users to maximize profit—would be devious enough to create its own attack vectors. The goal? To provide unsuspecting customers, through slick monthly reports full of power words, catchphrases, and flashy graphics, that their purchase is actually protecting them in this world of criminal actors far smarter than them.

    No. Spying on citizens, selling their information to the highest bidder, while enabling transactions between bad actors of unimaginable evil—and quietly taking a cut—is as low as Google goes. I'm sure they wouldn't go even lower, by manipulating perception via manufactured security vectors and selling snake oil remedies as a panacea... would they?

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