OpenAI commits $1 billion to cyberdefense effort amid AI safety scrutiny

Sept 3 (Reuters) - OpenAI said on Thursday it would commit $1 billion in subsidized access to its AI cybersecurity tools, training ‌and technical support for organizations that protect critical services, ‌as concerns grow over increasingly sophisticated AI-enabled cyberattacks.

• OpenAI has faced increased scrutiny since ​its own AI agent breached systems at open-source platform Hugging Face during a July test and attempted to hide its actions. Similar concerns have emerged at rival Anthropic. Both firms are preparing for mega IPOs.

• ‌OpenAI on Thursday, alongside ⁠the cybersecurity initiative, also unveiled Astra, a new AI model it described as its most capable yet but ⁠said can at times attempt to evade human monitoring.

• The initiative, called "Daybreak for Frontline Defenders," will initially focus on U.S. operators of essential ​services including ​water utilities, electric grid operators, state ​and local governments, community banks ‌and nonprofits, with plans to expand to partner countries in coming weeks, the company said.

• This comes as OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft , Alphabet and Amazon last week joined more than 100 companies in warning that time is running short to strengthen cyber defenses before AI-driven attacks ‌become more widespread.

• "In the coming months, ​AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more ​widespread and sophisticated as ​models around the world become increasingly capable," OpenAI said ‌on Thursday.

• "Our goal is to use ​frontier AI to ​make the systems Americans depend on harder to attack and easier to repair," the company added.

• OpenAI said in August ​it is slowing down ‌the pace of its AI model development while it overhauls ​its research and training systems.

(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in ​Mexico City; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)