A Survey on AI-Enabled Attacks and AI-Empowered Countermeasures in Physical Layer

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to integrated into our daily lives, it becomes increasingly crucial to prioritize the security of these systems, particularly at the physical layer. The physical layer is the foundational level of communication systems, responsible for transmitting data over a communication medium. The advent of AI has brought about significant advancements in the field of cybersecurity, introducing new attack methodologies and empowering countermeasures at the physical layer of communication systems. This dual aspect of AI has made it a critical component in maintaining the security and integrity of these systems. However, despite many existing efforts to apply AI into physical layer security, there is still a lack of comprehensive overview of attacks and countermeasures regarding AI-based attacks and countermeasures in this domain. In this article, we provide a general survey on AI -enabled attacks and AI-empowered countermeasures in the physical layer, and analyze its performance using two sets of proposed standards: evaluation criteria for AI -enabled attacks and AI -empowered countermeasures. Through this review, we aim to identify the key challenges that require extensive investigation and propose suggestions for future research directions.