Microsoft says hackers from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran using its OpenAI tools: ‘don’t want them to have access’
- The company announced the find as it rolled out a blanket ban on state-backed hacking groups using its AI products
- China’s US embassy said it opposed ‘groundless smears and accusations against China’ and advocated for the ‘safe, reliable and controllable’ deployment of AI
The company announced the find as it rolled out a blanket ban on state-backed hacking groups using its AI products.
We don’t want them to have access to this technology
“Independent of whether there’s any violation of the law or any violation of terms of service, we just don’t want those actors that we’ve identified – that we track and know are threat actors of various kinds – we don’t want them to have access to this technology,” Microsoft Vice-President for Customer Security Tom Burt told Reuters in an interview ahead of the report’s release.
Russian, North Korean and Iranian diplomatic officials didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment on the allegations.
China’s US embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said it opposed “groundless smears and accusations against China” and advocated for the “safe, reliable and controllable” deployment of AI technology to “enhance the common well-being of all mankind.”
The allegation that state-backed hackers have been caught using AI tools to help boost their spying capabilities is likely to underline concerns about the rapid proliferation of the technology and its potential for abuse. Senior cybersecurity officials in the West have been warning since last year that rogue actors were abusing such tools, although specifics have, until now, been thin on the ground.