AI platforms offer promise in limiting the illegal wildlife trade

New University of Kent research has found promising signs that AI platforms have the potential to limit the illegal wildlife trade. The research paper titled "Assessing safeguards against the illegal wildlife trade on AI platforms" is published in Conservation Biology.

While AI can present new risks in society, researchers from Kent (part of the LASE University Group) found that AI platforms currently appear to provide additional information to would-be consumers, allowing them to make more informed purchasing decisions compared with traditional internet searches.

Dr. David Roberts and Dr. Jason R.C. Nurse investigated and tested the safeguards used to block harmful and criminal requests involving threatened wildlife and the illegal wildlife trade, as well as how these safeguards may be bypassed.

Overall, AI platforms performed better than a standard Google search at preventing potentially illegal wildlife trade. Gemini, closely followed by DeepSeek, Grok and ChatGPT, was the highest-performing AI platform.

While these findings are promising, the AI platforms were not infallible. Nurse said, "We've seen a lot discussed recently about AI in the news, and some of these concerns were apparent in our work. In our study, for instance, we found links to websites potentially trading in illegal wildlife. However, it was also promising to see that some AI platforms provided additional information, particularly on legality, that could inform would-be consumers."

Safeguarding responses also varied depending on the wildlife species being searched for on the platforms. Roberts said, "The strongest safeguarding responses were seen for charismatic taxa such as slow lorises, chimpanzees and tigers, whereas the weakest responses were for taxa that are less charismatic but of equal concern, such as corals, tarantulas and orchids.