Top tech firms call for defensive measures against looming wave of AI-driven hacks

Major tech companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon are calling for a society-wide defensive surge to defeat what they describe as an impending wave of hacks driven by artificial intelligence.

In a joint letter issued Thursday, the companies — along with more than 100 others including Broadcom, Capital One, Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, General Motors, IBM, Mastercard, Oracle, Robinhood, Shopify, and Visa — said there was a limited time “to make our digital world much more secure” ahead of the AI threat.

“We have a limited window to strengthen cyber defenses,” the letter said. “In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable.”

Concerns have increased in recent months about the capabilities of increasingly advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models, including those made by OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the world’s leading AI developers.

In June, the world’s “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance — composed of the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — issued a rare joint statement warning that the AI revolution was poised to “fundamentally transform” cybersecurity.

In mid-July, two OpenAI models escaped their confined testing environment and gained access to the internet, where they found and attacked Hugging Face, a site that AI developers use to store and share code.

Anthropic later discovered that its models had also gained unauthorized access to three unnamed organizations during testing that was supposed to keep them away from “real-world” systems.

The open letter published on Thursday called for a “collective response” that includes recognizing that current cybersecurity measures are inadequate and that AI-powered tools are needed for defending against new threats.

Technology providers should “help lead the response,” the letter said.

It also called on governments to “coordinate cyber defense at local, national, and international levels,” including sharing intelligence and providing funding for various efforts.

Likewise, so-called frontier AI developers — companies building the most powerful generative AI — should “provide responsible model access, significant funding, training, and hands-on support,” in addition to improving testing processes, it said.

The letter did not include suggestions for any specific amounts of funding or monetary commitments for those objectives.