Britain's GCHQ cyber spies embrace the AI revolution

FILE PHOTO: A GCHQ logo on a wall inside Britain's Government Communication Headquarters, in Cheltenham, November 17, 2015. REUTERS/Ben Birchall/Pool/File Photo

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's cyber spies at the GCHQ eavesdropping agency say they have fully embraced artificial intelligence (AI) to uncover patterns in vast amounts of global data to counter hostile disinformation and snare child abusers.

AI, which traces its history back to British mathematician Alan Turing's work in the 1930s, allows modern computers to learn to sift through data to see the shadows of spies and criminals that a human brain might miss.