AI models now surpass most humans at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities, said Anthropic.

A new Anthropic project will see global companies use Claude as part of their defence security systems.

‘Project Glasswing’ gives partnering companies access to Anthropic’s unreleased Claude Mythos, which, according to the AI giant, has already found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser. Mythos was launched in preview yesterday (7 April).

Anthropic’s Mythos preview is significantly more capable at generating exploits. In its research, the company noted that Mythos developed working exploits 181 times out of the several hundred attempts, while Opus 4.6 had a near 0pc success rate.

“We did not explicitly train Mythos preview to have these capabilities. Rather, they emerged as a downstream consequence of general improvements in code, reasoning and autonomy,” the company noted. Publications, including the New York Times and the Register have warned against the negative consequences of models such as Mythos falling into the hands of bad actors.

Fortunately, Anthropic has chosen not to release the model. Instead, the company is bringing together leading businesses, including Amazon Web Services, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JP Morgan Chase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, Nvidia and Palo Alto Networks, allowing them to access Mythos preview to boost their cyber defences.

The company has extended Mythos access to a group of more than 40 organisations that build or maintain critical software infrastructure.

“AI models have reached a level of coding capability where they can surpass all but the most skilled humans at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities,” said Anthropic.

Anthropic has promised to share learnings from Project Glasswing to benefit the wider industry. The company has also made a commitment of up to $100m in usage credits for Mythos preview across the project, as well as $4m in direct donations to open-source security organisations.

The Claude-maker has also hired Eric Boyd, the long-term president of AI platforms at Microsoft, to lead as the company’s head of infrastructure.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.