Are Passphrases Still Secure in the Age of AI?

The short answer up front: Yes, but only if the passphrase is genuinely random . Passphrases emerged as a direct response to a well-known problem with classic password policies: requirements like “at least one special character, one number, one uppercase letter” tend to produce short but complex-looking passwords (“Tr0ub4dor&3”) that are hard for humans to remember but comparatively easy for machines to guess because users keep falling back on the same patterns (capital letter at the start, number and special character at the end).