AI models capable of launching major cyberattacks that could overwhelm the defenses of governments and businesses are months, not years, away, an international alliance of intelligence agencies warned in a joint statement.
The Five Eyes grouping, comprising the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, urged governments and corporate leaders to act now to improve their defenses against sophisticated cyber threats.
The rare call to action comes after the Trump administration ordered AI giant Anthropic to suspend use of its most advanced models by foreign nationals, and highlights the growing unease among western nations about the emerging capabilities of the technology.
“Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. The timeline is not years, it is months,” the group of spy agencies said in the statement on Monday. “The evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming cyber risk, and we must act swiftly to remain ahead.”
AI researchers and executives have expressed various safety concerns over the advancing technology, which the Five Eyes leaders described as being able to lower barriers for malicious actors and increase the speed and complexity of attacks. AI experts said the message is stark and could have worrying implications, not just for governments and corporations, but for small and medium businesses around the world.
The US administration’s broad directive against Anthropic’s Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models was one of the furthest-reaching actions a government has taken in response to the advanced capabilities of an AI model. Mythos had raised widespread cybersecurity concerns because the company said it was extremely adept at finding security flaws. But Anthropic said it believed the US government had become aware of a method of jailbreaking its public Fable model, or getting around its internal safety guardrails. Anthropic and the administration have been meeting to try and resolve the issue.
To counter the threat, businesses and leaders should invest in cyber defenses, upgrade old systems or patch faulty software, and limit who has access to critical systems, the Five Eyes leaders said. And though AI is being used by adversaries to move faster and more effectively, it is also part of the solution, they added.
“Organizations that integrate AI tools into their security operations can detect vulnerabilities earlier, improve software quality, monitor unusual behaviour, and respond faster to incidents,” the security alliance said.
Dozens of cybersecurity researchers, AI entrepreneurs, and corporate executives this month signed an open letter urging the Trump administration to commit to an open, scientific, and transparent process of handling AI risk assessments, stating it was essential for security teams to find and fix flaws in their own newly written as well as decades of legacy code faster than adversaries.