Major tech companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft (MSFT.O), Alphabet (GOOGL.O), and Amazon (AMZN.O), are calling for a society-wide defensive surge to defeat what they describe as an impending wave of hacks driven by artificial intelligence.
As reported by Reuters, the tech giants made the declaration in a joint letter issued Thursday.
According to the report, the companies — along with more than 100 others including Broadcom (AVGO.O), Capital One (COF.N), Cloudflare (NET.N), CrowdStrike (CRWD.O), General Motors (GM.N), IBM (IBM.N), Mastercard (MA.N), Oracle (ORCL.N), Robinhood (HOOD.O), Shopify (SHOP.TO), and Visa (V.N), said there was a limited amount of time “to make our digital world become much more secure” ahead of the AI threat.
“In the coming months, AI-enabled cyberattacks will become far more widespread as models around the world become increasingly capable,” the letter said, Reuters reported.
It called on government and industry leaders “to bring the full weight of their technology, resources, and expertise to this effort.”
It called on governments to expedite trusted access programs, which give certain companies access to more powerful models ahead of the general public, and for all other organizations to “make cyber defense an immediate leadership priority.”
The U.S. cyberdefense agency CISA and the White House did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
President Donald Trump’s administration imposed deep cuts on CISA when it took office and the agency’s staffing fell by about a third last year.
Meanwhile, fears that advances in AI will supercharge hacking campaigns are being realized as rogue elements increasingly deploy large language models to break into organizations around the world.
In June, the world’s “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance — composed of the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — issued a joint statement warning that the AI revolution was poised to “fundamentally transform” cybersecurity.
