Emily Heintz is a technical fellow with Schellman based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She currently manages privacy assessments and certifications across the full suite of offerings, including Global CBPR / PRP, ISO 27701, EU Cloud Code of Conduct, and Microsoft SSPA. Prior to joining Schellman in 2020, Emily worked as a Project Manager on the U.S. Privacy team at a Fortune 50 retailer focusing on designing controls to comply with the CCPA and conducting privacy reviews of emerging technology solutions. She also has experience implementing a privacy impact assessment and artificial intelligence impact assessment process at a Future 50 recognized company. She is an active member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), is a Fellow of Information Privacy (FIP), holding both the CIPP/US and CIPM certifications, and has obtained her CISSP.

“Hacking AI – How to survive the AI uprising,” by Gant Laborde, highlights how vulnerable AI systems are to attacks that exploit their inputs—whether audio, visual, or data-based. From inaudible “dolphin attacks” that can open garage doors via smart assistants, to image rescaling tricks that cause models to see one thing while humans see another, these vulnerabilities are practical, reproducible, and already being used.

Adversarial image manipulation, model inversion, and input perturbation demonstrate how attackers can confuse, extract from, or deceive AI systems—sometimes with just a few pixels or subtle audio tweaks. Examples include misclassifying daisies as vases or using pixel-level noise to fool object detection systems into thinking a stop sign doesn’t exist. These issues raise urgent concerns around safety, especially as AI powers more real-world decisions.

Rather than fearmongering, Gant urges developers to get informed and involved. Most attacks exploit predictable model behavior and training assumptions. If developers understand how these attacks work, they can start defending against them—whether by improving datasets, using robust training techniques, or simply asking better questions about how their systems might break.