In the months before he was arrested, allegedly on his way to carry out a plan to kill children at a local school, a 13-year-old boy spent hours alone in his bedroom.
During the long, caffeine-fuelled nights in his home in Maryborough, 300 kilometres north of Brisbane, the boy was allegedly radicalised online.
Last month, the Australian Federal Police told a parliamentary inquiry into youth radicalisation that the boy was exposed to extremist content in the "darker corners of the web".
But police allege the boy also used more widely available technology in the lead-up to his arrest.
Analysis of electronic devices seized from the boy's home allegedly found he had asked an AI chatbot, on multiple occasions, to describe mass-shooting scenarios targeting "a Jewish and black festival".
The responses provided by the chatbot were not revealed in court, so it was unclear whether the requests were rejected by the AI model's safety guardrails, the filters and rules designed to ensure the model is used within legal and ethical boundaries.
But Tech Against Terrorism, a United Nations-supported group dedicated to preventing the unsafe use of AI, has raised the alarm that the ability of extremists and terrorists to bypass AI safety guardrails, or remove them altogether, is rapidly accelerating.
