Venture-backed cybersecurity startup SlashNext Inc. today launched Generative HumanAI, a software tool that uses generative artificial intelligence to detect phishing emails.

SlashNext claims the tool can detect phishing emails with 99.9% accuracy.

Pleasanton, California-based SlashNext is backed by $40.5 million in funding. It sells a suite of products for protecting employee devices from hacking attempts. Besides phishing emails, SlashNext’s products can also spot malicious links and email attachments.

Phishing emails often follow the same basic patterns. They usually try to trick a company’s employees into clicking a malicious link, disclosing sensitive business data or transferring funds to an external bank account. The fact that the same tactics repeat themselves frequently makes phishing campaigns predictable to a certain extent. 

According to SlashNext, its new Generative HumanAI tool can analyze a phishing tactic and produce thousands of emails that implement the tactic. It then uses those emails to detect hacking campaigns. Specifically, the tool scans the messages that arrive in an employee’s inbox and consults its database of AI-generated phishing emails to find malicious correspondence.

Generative HumanAI also uses other methods to detect phishing campaigns. According to SlashNext, the tool maps out the writing styles of a company’s employees and suppliers. It then compares new emails against those writing styles to detect pattern-breaking messages that may be malicious. For added measure, the tool analyzes textual details such as an email’s tone and topic to find hints of malicious activity.

Generative HumanAI is launching amid concerns that generative AI tools such as ChatGPT could be used by hackers to malicious ends. In theory, a hacker could use an AI system such as ChatGPT to generate a large number of high-fidelity phishing emails quickly. According to SlashNext, its new tool can mitigate the risk posed by such AI-augmented hacking campaigns. 

Business email compromise is a “$43 billion problem for organizations, according to the FBI, and now with ChatGPT, the opportunities are boundless for hackers to modify code, simulate conversations and launch attacks faster than any human,” said SlashNext Chief Executive Officer Patrick Harr. “The addition of Generative AI to SlashNext’s HumanAI platform represents a revolutionary breakthrough that provides the only effective prevention, by not only identifying current zero-hour BEC threats but also anticipating a massive number of future threats.”

Generative HumanAI will complement SlashNext’s existing email security features. Before launching the generative AI tool, SlashNext developed a system that opens links and attachments in a virtual browser before allowing employees to interact with them. The virtual browser uses machine learning to find malware.

SlashNext makes its cybersecurity features available in several versions. One version is designed to be used with the Microsoft 365 productivity suite. Another focuses on protecting employees’ handsets from malicious text messages and smishing, or SMS phishing, campaigns. SlashNext also offers application programming interfaces that allow companies to integrate its technology into their own software. 

Image: SlashNext