AI security infrastructure needed after 'malicious' foreign actors use OpenAI to train operatives, expert says

The U.S. will have to decide how openly it wants to allow public access to artificial intelligence (AI), potentially impacting overall data protection policies, after Microsoft revealed state actors from rival nations used the tech to train their operatives.

"We're either going to have to decide whether we're going to keep these things open and easy to access for everybody, which means for bad and good actors, or we're going to take a different tack," Phil Siegel, founder of the AI non-profit Center for Advanced Preparedness and Threat Response Simulation, told Fox News Digital.

OpenAI, in a blog post written Wednesday, identified five state-affiliated "malicious" actors: Chinese-affiliated Charcoal Typhoon and Salmon Typhoon, Iranian-affiliated Crimson North Korean-affiliated Sandstorm and Russian-affiliated Emerald Sleet and Forest Blizzard.

The post claimed the groups used OpenAI services to "query open-source information, translate, find coding errors, and run basic coding tasks." The two Chinese-affiliated groups, for example, allegedly translated technical papers, debugged code, generated scripts and looked at how to hide processes in different electronic systems.

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In response, OpenAI proposed a multipronged approach to combating such malicious use of the company’s tools, including "monitoring and disrupting" malicious actors through new tech to identify and cut off actors’ activities, greater cooperation with other AI platforms to catch malicious activity and improved public transparency.

"As is the case with many other ecosystems, there are a handful of malicious actors that require sustained attention so that everyone else can continue to