Prompt Injection Attacks on AI Agents: The New Enterprise Vulnerability

Prompt injection attacks involve inserting malicious instructions into an AI's input to manipulate its behavior, exploiting the AI's inability to differentiate between developer-provided guidelines and user-provided text. These attacks can be direct, where the attacker inputs the malicious prompt, or indirect, where harmful instructions are hidden in data processed by the AI. The consequences range from data leaks and unauthorized actions to misinformation and manipulation, making prompt injection a significant threat. Due to the nature of AI language models, it is hard to fix, as the data is essentially code for the LLM. The attacks have high success rates across many models, making it a fundamental challenge in AI alignment and security.