Bank of America Adds 1,000 Contractors to Patch Software Flaws Exposed by Anthropic's Mythos

Bank of America brought in 1,000 outside contractors to help fix software vulnerabilities uncovered by advanced AI models, including Anthropic's Mythos, CEO Brian Moynihan told CNBC.

Speaking after the bank's third-quarter earnings release, Moynihan said the company moved earlier this year to shore up a wide range of internal and vendor code, drawing on thousands of employees and outside personnel. "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?'" he told CNBC's Leslie Picker.

The contractors were brought on in the second quarter and remain on the job today, on top of the 3,000 people the bank already has in that area, Moynihan said. The bank spent a "couple hundred million plus" on the software remediation and on regulatory issues tied to anti-money laundering compliance in the third quarter, he told analysts.

The remarks are among the first from a major U.S. corporation to put specific manpower and dollar figures on protecting its systems from Mythos, which was released to a small group of banks, technology firms and government agencies in April. They also point to AI's dual nature: while it can cut costs by boosting productivity, models like Mythos can expose and exploit long-standing software flaws, pushing firms into costly defensive work.

"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. With the company's shares down as much as 8% on Wednesday, he sought to reassure investors that the higher spending is temporary. "Once you patch, you don't have to patch as much. ... The pipeline moves through," he said, adding that remediation costs are expected to fall over time.

Elsewhere, AI is helping trim expenses. Bank of America has about 130 internal AI projects, and savings from them are projected to climb from $300 million this year to $700 million in 2027, Moynihan told analysts. The bank's head count dropped by roughly 3,400 over the past year as it cut about 5% of managers; how much of that reduction stems from AI is unclear.

Source: CNBC