A coalition led by OpenAI is warning that AI will sharply accelerate the speed and scale of cyberattacks, leaving enterprises with a narrowing window to fix long-standing security weaknesses before they are exploited.
“In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable,” the group said in an open letter signed by more than 100 technology and cybersecurity firms, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services, and Anthropic. “We have a limited window to strengthen cyber defenses.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reinforced the urgency in a post on X, calling it a “critically important moment for cyber defense” and warning that there is little time to act.
The coalition called on “leaders across industry and government to bring the full weight of their technology, resources, and expertise” to the effort, including putting “cyber-capable AI in the hands of defenders” and prioritizing fixes for high-risk weaknesses.
The coalition said the shift is not about new vulnerabilities, but about scale, which is about AI systems accelerating the discovery and exploitation of weaknesses that enterprises have struggled to fix for years.
The letter comes weeks after AI developers, including OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic, highlighted emerging behaviors in advanced AI systems that raised new questions about control and security.
“Longstanding bugs, excessive permissions, misconfigurations, insecure and unpatched software, weak authentication, and technical debt… have left systems exposed,” the letter added.
The letter attributes the risk to the ability of AI systems to accelerate the discovery and exploitation of existing vulnerabilities.
“Longstanding bugs, excessive permissions, misconfigurations, insecure and unpatched software, weak authentication, and technical debt… have left systems exposed,” the letter added.
SpecterOps, a signatory of the letter, said it signed the letter because those weaknesses are already present and can be exploited more quickly as AI capabilities advance.
“We agree with the three principles at its center: the weaknesses already exist, advanced AI needs to reach more defenders, and the response must be collective and widespread,” it said in a statement.
Robbie Mueller, technical lead for cybersecurity at ArmorCode, said organizations already face constraints in addressing known vulnerabilities.
“This shouldn’t be framed as an AI sophistication problem. It’s a capacity problem,” Mueller said, adding that organizations “can only remediate roughly one in ten vulnerabilities in a given month.”
Mueller said risk increases when vulnerabilities form multi-step attack paths across systems.
“What matters is not the number of findings but which ones chain together into a viable path… kill that path and the risk goes away,” he said.
The coalition does not introduce new categories of defense, instead emphasizing execution of existing practices.
“Make cyber defense an immediate leadership priority… with the urgency and coordination of an incident,” the letter stated.
1Password, another signatory, said the initiative highlights a “limited window to strengthen security” and calls for fixing high-risk weaknesses, enforcing least-privilege access, and verifying controls.
Sophos said in a statement that AI-enabled threats increase risk to both enterprises and public services and require coordinated action.
“Cyber defense is a shared responsibility,” the company said, adding that collaboration between industry and governments is necessary to address the threat.
Sophos said AI can also help defenders “find exposures… and respond to threats before they cause material harm.”
The letter warns that AI will increase both the scale and speed of cyberattacks, placing additional pressure on enterprise security operations.
“In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated,” the coalition said.
Johnathan Hunt, chief information security officer at LogicMonitor, said many enterprise environments are not designed to operate at that pace.
“Bad actors will move at machine speed, while many legacy systems still rely on human reaction times,” Hunt said.
At the same time, organizations are managing faster rates of system and software changes.
Ryan McCurdy, vice president at Liquibase, said AI is increasing both attack speed and development velocity.
“AI is accelerating both sides of the equation,” McCurdy said, adding that security teams must determine whether changes are “authorized, safe, and expected” at speeds that exceed manual review.
The letter calls for increased investment in cyber defense, particularly for organizations supporting essential services.
Seemant Sehgal, CEO of BreachLock, said the approach raises questions about incentives.
“The companies asking governments to fund AI defensive tools are the same ones that would get paid to supply them… the recommended response isn’t neutral,” Sehgal said.
John Strand, owner of Black Hills Information Security, said the most actionable recommendation is the call for greater sharing of threat intelligence.
“The one recommendation that has some teeth… is greater sharing of IOCs,” Strand said.
The coalition said coordinated action across industry and government will be required to address the threat.
“Fix the most dangerous weaknesses, verify the fixes, and share what works so others can build on it,” the letter states. The group said such efforts could help strengthen defenses for enterprises and organizations that operate critical infrastructure.