How many security professionals does it take to clean up the flaws found by AI? About a third more than you've got now.

That's how many more security professionals and other third-party consultants Bank of America has temporarily hired in order to work through the patches and other fixes necessary to address vulnerabilities spotted by Anthropic's Mythos and other AI security models. In addition to 3,000 existing staff, the bank added 1,000 external contractors to address the challenge.

Anthropic unveiled its Claude Mythos security model in April, but initially only gave access to approved partners via Project Glasswing. Mythos was then temporarily banned for export by the US government, alongside its Fable model, lifting the restrictions three weeks later.

In an interview with CNBC, the bank's CEO Brian Moynihan said the company had spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last quarter fixing software as well as sorting out anti-money laundering compliance following a near-record fine from US regulators.

Finding flaws

Banks were included in the list of organisations given access to Mythos, with JPMorgan Chase an early partner, though reports from earlier this year suggest Bank of America has been testing the model since April. The main concern is the ability of the model to spot flaws in systems, sparking a wave of patching to avoid security risks.

"That risk is real risk, and that's why when the frontier-type models came out... A lot of us sat down and said, 'How do we figure out how to get through this quickly?'" Moynihan said in an interview with the American news network.

"We put on 1,000 contractors to help us do the patching work in the second quarter, and those people remain here today, helping us, on top of the 3,000 people we have in that area," he added.

However, Moynihan admitted concerns around the fact that companies rolling out AI products spotting these flaws were also offering services to mitigate them.

"We've got to stay ahead of them, and we've got to be mindful that the people doing the software development are the people trying to sell us the services," Moynihan said.

High costs

While the security work comes at a high cost, Moynihan said the company expects that to reduce over time. "Once you patch, you don't have to patch as much. ... The pipeline moves through," he added in the interview.

Bank of America predicts it will save $300m this year thanks to internal AI projects, rising to $700m by next year – however, Moynihan also suggested the bank was spending $4bn a year on new technologies, including AI.

Moynihan said on the call with analysts that "AI has helped us", with 130 projects implemented. Though he admitted "none of them are huge contributors," Moynihan predicted a 10% boost in efficiency at the same cost.

Bank of America's share price slid 8% after its quarterly results revealed a 17% slip in third-quarter profit – and after $1.2bn in fines for violating anti-money laundering rules was announced Tuesday.