The Bank of England (BoE) issued a similar warning on Tuesday, stating that rapid progress in frontier AI had increased risks to cyber and operational resilience within financial markets.
BoE governor Andrew Bailey (pictured right), however, distanced the UK from the ECB’s approach. “I saw what the ECB issued today,” he said. “I think it is sensible in terms of highlighting the issue. But in all honesty, we are taking a different approach. We are working very closely with the banks, because… it is not about issuing edicts.”
Regulators globally have grown increasingly concerned about a new wave of AI systems capable of identifying large numbers of previously undetected IT vulnerabilities.
The ESRB, tasked with monitoring risks to the EU financial system, said the new generation of AI represents a shift in cyber security, since weaknesses can now be exploited within minutes or hours. It said such tools can find and exploit software flaws with far greater speed, scale and precision than earlier AI systems, and raised its assessment of systemic cyber risk from “elevated” to “severe”.
Anthropic, one of the most prominent AI developers alongside competitors such as OpenAI, became the first AI company to face export restrictions imposed by the White House, after officials expressed concern that its technology could be exploited to target vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure. Those restrictions on its flagship models were removed last week once the company agreed to introduce additional safeguards.