- An engineer reveals how he turned a commercial drone into a killer
- This drone is equipped with an assassination mode to track individual targets
A swarm of murderous AI drones might sound like the plot of a dystopian sci-fi thriller.
But in a terrifying glimpse of the future, one scientist has demonstrated how easy it is to build “assassination drones” that can hunt down and kill people.
In just a few hours, engineer and entrepreneur Luis Wenas turned a $115 (£89.99) drone into the basis of a deadly weapon.
Using AI facial recognition, the drone was programmed to recognize an individual and charge towards them at full speed.
Wenas said he built the drone “for games,” but he also said he wanted to raise awareness about how easily it could be used to carry out deadly terrorist attacks.
In a video posted to X (formerly Twitter), Wenas and his fellow engineers demonstrated how commercial drones can be programmed to track targets.
“I thought it would be fun to create a drone that chases you as a game,” Wenas wrote in the post.
But this horrifying video quickly shows how dangerous this technology really is.
This drone uses an AI “object detection model” to recognize faces with its onboard camera.
When the drone finds a face, it is programmed to keep it in the center of its field of view and fly straight ahead to pursue the target.
In one mode, the drone charges directly at what it recognizes as a face.
In this mode, the video shows the drone begin to “attack” other people in the park, only stopping when Wenas catches it.
The drone also has a second configuration, which Wenas describes as an “assassination drone.”
Wenas writes: “We could also add facial recognition to it so it would only attack people it knew who they were. We could easily identify them from 10 meters away.”
This video shows how the drone selectively chooses to track targets, ignoring others.
And while this drone is not particularly dangerous, Wenas warns that more lethal drones could pose a serious threat.
He writes: “We literally built this in just a few hours, but it made us realize how terrifying it was.” They strapped a small amount of explosives to it and set off hundreds of explosives. It’s also easy to do. ”
On social media, commenters reacted to the invention with a mixture of fascination and horror.
In response to the post, an
Another commenter added, “Well, it can’t be that easy to build…”
Even X CEO Elon Musk responded to the post, saying, “Yes, it’s surprisingly easy.”
Small drones carrying explosives have already had a major impact on Ukraine’s war.
Ukrainian drone operators create deadly weapons by attaching grenades, mortars, and other explosives to cheap, commercially available drones.
These first-person drones have proven highly effective at tracking and destroying everything from individual troops to tanks and bunkers.
But the key difference is that these drones are not operated by autonomous AI, but by individuals who are in control of the process at all times.
The real danger is that swarms of cheap, easy-to-manufacture autonomous drones could be unleashed on battlefields or even public spaces.
Wenas writes: “We’re going to see some type of terrorist attack using this type of technology within the next few years.”
“You still need some technical knowledge to build this, but it’s getting easier and easier.”
Although autonomous drone swarms have not yet been deployed on the battlefield, DARPA is reportedly developing a weapon of mass destruction drone swarm called AMASS (Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms).
AMASS is still in the planning stages, but DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is collecting bids from suppliers for a $78 million contract.
“We are checking for bombs and guns, but we do not yet have an anti-drone system for large events or public places,” Wenas wrote. We urgently need to build anti-drone systems for civilian space. ”
Wenas describes himself as an “open source absolutist,” meaning he believes that code, especially important developments in AI, should be made available to the public.
And in replies to the post, many social media users asked Wenas to publish the code or share a complete tutorial on how to build an assassination drone.
However, in this case, the company said it would refrain from posting the code, citing the potential dangers posed by autonomous drones.
“I won’t post it right now. Honestly, it’s very easy to code, but there’s no point in enabling it,” he added.
