Combatting malicious AI prompting

Since LLMs have exploded in popularity, AI safety has been an important topic of discussion. As they are adopted more widely, there is a tricky problem fundamental to this technology: input and instructions are the same thing. In a traditional program (like a simple login form), the code written by the programmer contains instructions which tell it to do something with provided input (maybe a username and password). If the user input is malicious, we can use safeguards in the code to reject or clean it, protecting against attacks like SQL injection or cross-site scripting. The problem with LLMs is the input and the instructions are the same — the prompt.

You can find the full article on the BCS Website, or in the Spring 2026 issue of the IT Now magazine.