OpenAI, Anthropic and 100-plus firms warn AI attacks are about to scale

OpenAI Group PBC today published an open letter signed by more than 100 technology companies, banks, insurers and security vendors warning that artificial intelligence-enabled cyberattacks will become far more widespread within months and that defenders have a narrow period left to get ready.

“We have a limited window to strengthen cyber defenses,” the letter opens. Hospitals, water treatment plants and the infrastructure that carries internet traffic are named as the assets most at risk.

The roster is unusually broad for a document of this kind. Anthropic PBC, Google LLC, Microsoft Corp., Amazon Web Services Inc., Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and IBM Corp. all signed, as did CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., Palo Alto Networks Inc., Cloudflare Inc., Okta Inc. and Fortinet Inc. Capital One Financial Corp., Mastercard Inc., Visa Inc. and Citigroup Inc. appear on the list beside the Center for Internet Security. Organizers said more names will be added.

The letter argues that status quo security will not hold, pointing at longstanding bugs, excessive permissions, misconfigurations and weak authentication that attackers exploit today without any help from AI. Cyber-capable models, the signatories say, can hand specialist skills to teams that cannot afford to hire them. Nobody can absorb the problem alone, which is where the call for a collective response comes in.