With cybersecurity spending expected to exceed $300 billion globally this year, organizations are accelerating their investments in artificial intelligence-based security platforms. Security teams and cybersecurity professionals, however, are confronting issues such as the lack of visibility into how employees are deploying AI across the network. At the same time, the number of AI-based attacks is growing. Specifically, nearly 48 percent of cybersecurity professionals report that they lack visibility into how employees deploy AI tools across corporate networks, raising fresh concerns about "shadow AI" use within organizations. At the same time, attackers are now using these virtual chatbots and other technologies as part of their arsenal, with approximately 52 percent of cyber pros reporting that AI is helping threat actors more than defenders. These results are part of a report released by cybersecurity firm Bitdefender, which surveyed 1,200 IT and cybersecurity professionals, including C-suite leaders, middle managers, and security practitioners. The numbers also show that just a few years ago, AI-based threats were considered mostly theoretical. Now, however, only 17 percent of those surveyed believe that AI attacks are "hyped." Instead, cybersecurity professionals are experiencing numerous threats that use AI technologies, including: - Fifty-nine percent report their organization has experienced social engineering attacks they believe involve AI. - Fifty-five percent report that their organization has experienced malware-based attacks that involve AI. - Seventy percent report that they are seeing more sophisticated phishing attacks powered by AI. In the report, Bitdefender's own researchers detail how one nation-state threat group, APT36, has used an AI-driven development model. Other security researchers documented how a cybercriminal group utilized AI to graduate from small-scale hacking schemes to full-blown ransomware attacks. The Bitdefender report stressed that while an "AI-attack apocalypse" has not materialized, the willingness of attackers and cybercriminals to use AI – as well as employees