ChatGPT for Digital Forensic Investigation: The Good, The Bad, and The Unknown

Abstract

The disruptive application of ChatGPT (GPT-3.5, GPT-4) to a variety of domains has become a topic of much discussion in the scientific community and society at large. Large Language Models (LLMs), e.g., BERT, Bard, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs), LLaMA, etc., have the ability to take instructions, or prompts, from users and generate answers and solutions based on very large volumes of text-based training data. This paper assesses the impact and potential impact of ChatGPT on the field of digital forensics, specifically looking at its latest pre-trained LLM, GPT-4. A series of experiments are conducted to assess its capability across several digital forensic use cases including artefact understanding, evidence searching, code generation, anomaly detection, incident response, and education. Across these topics, its strengths and risks are outlined and a number of general conclusions are drawn. Overall this paper concludes that while there are some potential low-risk applications of ChatGPT within digital forensics, many are either unsuitable at present, since the evidence would need to be uploaded to the service, or they require sufficient knowledge of the topic being asked of the tool to identify incorrect assumptions, inaccuracies, and mistakes. However, to an appropriately knowledgeable user, it could act as a useful supporting tool in some circumstances.

Children of AI: A Protocol for Managing the Born-Digital Ephemera Spawned by Generative AI Language Models

“…articles that quote extracts of the conversation in the text but do not provide access to the full text [15,22,23,25,29,31,38,39] 4.…”

“…ChatGPT has been shown to be capable of producing poetry [3], short stories and plays [4][5][6], English essays [7], as well as writing lines of code [8]. A growing number of studies has been looking at the effects of generative AI on education and academia, examining the level of knowledge and capabilities of ChatGPT as reflected in its responses to several fields of academic endeavor, such as agriculture [9], archaeology [10], chemistry [11], computer programming [12], cultural heritage management [13], diabetes education [14], digital forensics [15], medicine [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], medical education [24], nursing education [25], and remote sensing [10]. ChatGPT is the typical double-edged sword presented by many new technologies [26].…”