You can turn a commercial drone into an AI attack drone in just a few hours, an engineer has revealed. Entrepreneur and engineer Luis Wenus, recently posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he and another engineer named Robert Lukoszko had created a drone capable of hunting down specific targets by itself.
According to Wenus, the process was entirely too simple, and they were even able to build facial recognition into the drone, allowing it to target specific people at a range of 33 feet (10 meters). That might not sound that impressive, but considering this drone could easily be configured to contain an explosive payload, it’s rather terrifying.
Because the drone can be configured to recognize and charge at people, and the fact that facial recognition can be included in it, it makes it a very effective and hard-to-avoid AI attack drone. We don’t currently have any anti-drone systems for big events or public spaces, which makes this feat even scarier.
Wenus says that he considers himself an “open source absolutist,” but because of the nature of this creation, he wouldn’t be sharing the code used to create the attack drone. He also warned that similar designs could be used to orchestrate terror attacks in the near future and that it will just become easier to make AI attack drones as time passes. We’ve already seen governments debating the use of AI-controlled drones in combat, so it is only a matter of time before we see something like this, too.
Additionally, he says that this experiment’s success shows just how important it is for us to create anti-drone systems for civilian spaces where large crowds tend to gather. Things like cameras, acoustic sensors, radar to detect the drones, and more could help us keep those areas safer from drones like this.
Until we come up with proper precautions, the fear that someone might create and deploy an AI attack drone is likely only going to grow. Hopefully, Wenus’ experiment is an eye-opener for many, and we see some progress in that area.
