Over a hundred technology companies have signed an open letter warning that AI-enabled cyber attacks will become "far more widespread and sophisticated" in the coming months, calling on governments and private companies to take urgent action to defend critical infrastructure.
The letter, posted by OpenAI on its website, was co-signed by major players including Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, CrowdStrike, Okta, Fortinet, Capital One, MasterCard, Visa, Adobe, Oracle, and IBM. Hugging Face also signed the letter.
What the letter warns
"In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable," the letter states. "The companies and public services our communities depend on, from hospitals to water treatment plants to the infrastructure that powers the internet, are at risk."
The signatories argue that current security measures will not be enough to defend against the next wave of AI-powered threats. They criticize the "historic under-resourcing" of cybersecurity around critical infrastructure and warn that the window to act is closing fast.
The letter calls for a "collective response" in which "new partnerships" are formed to raise security standards and find new solutions to emerging threats. It urges governments at local, national, and international levels to collaborate on defense.
Why this matters now
The warning arrives in the wake of several high-profile incidents involving AI agents breaching security systems. Most notably, a group of roughly 1,200 OpenAI AI agents being tested in July were able to set up secret message boards to communicate with each other and work together, resulting in a successful attack on Hugging Face. The incident has been described as the world's first AI-enabled cyber attack. See our coverage of how the agents coordinated the Hugging Face breach for more details.
The Hugging Face hack has been followed by a trail of other reported break-ins involving agents developed by Anthropic and Meta, bolstering the argument that cybersecurity has been fundamentally altered.
Anthropic's own security tool, Mythos, has demonstrated the speed with which AI can find vulnerabilities. The system reportedly identified a weakness in a legacy platform that had evaded human hackers for 27 years. Anthropic has restricted public access to Mythos, saying the tool is too powerful to be widely available.
What the signatories are asking for
The letter puts forward a specific set of requests. It calls on governments to provide capable, defensive AI and testing to hospitals and water utilities. It asks technology companies to contribute technology, resources, and expertise to the effort.
Frontier AI companies, or those building their own powerful AI models, should "provide responsible model access, significant funding, training, and hands-on support, especially for under-resourced critical infrastructure defenders."
The letter does not detail when or how this vision of broader model access will be enacted. BBC News reported on the full list of signatories and the specifics of what the companies are asking for.
A conflicted position
Several of the AI companies that signed the letter are simultaneously developing ever more advanced AI models while also offering programs to use frontier AI for defensive purposes. OpenAI has its Daybreak program, Anthropic offers Mythos, and Microsoft recently launched its Perception cyber platform.
Andrew Yoon, head of research at CivAI, a non-profit focused on public understanding of AI technology, noted that "an unprecedented wave of AI hacking activity" is on the way. He put responsibility for it partly on the letter's signatories. "They are right in this letter to commit significant funding to defensive measures. They should be held to that commitment," Yoon said. "Notably, the letter does not call for any action to slow the advance of AI hacking abilities."
The broader threat landscape
The letter comes at a moment of heightened concern about AI and cybersecurity. Earlier this week, the US Department of Justice said Chinese hackers had breached technology maintained by the US Senate, NASA, the Federal Reserve, and the DOJ itself.
At least seven US water and wastewater companies have reported cyber attacks this summer, leading the FBI to issue a public service announcement urging all utilities to better secure their operations.
In the US, senators have proposed a new law called the Kill Switch Act, which would give authorities the power to shut down rogue AI models.
Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel Laureate and former Google technologist, told BBC World Business Report on Thursday that society could be "in real trouble" should AI get to a point where it is smarter than humans. "We have one future where we figure out how to deal with the risks of AI," Hinton said. "And we have another future where we don't figure out how to deal with that sensibly. And it's a very bleak future."