IMF Warns AI Cyber Threats Could Severely Shake Markets

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Thursday of the risks to global financial stability posed by cyberattacks powered by advanced artificial intelligence tools, calling for greater international cooperation on the issue.

“IMF analysis suggests that extreme cyber-incident losses could trigger funding strains, raise solvency concerns, and disrupt broader markets,” the lender warned in a new report. The study’s authors highlighted the risks posed by the highly interconnected nature of the global financial system, with advanced AI models able to “dramatically reduce” the time and cost of exploiting vulnerabilities.

The warning comes weeks after AI company Anthropic cautioned that its yet-to-be-released “Mythos” model was incredibly adept at finding and exploiting such weaknesses. The model was particularly efficient at identifying vulnerabilities that developers and users had been previously unaware of.

In the hands of hackers, such so-called “zero-day” vulnerabilities are considered particularly dangerous. On Wednesday, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told Fox News that an “all-government” and private sector effort was being made to test the model and ensure it does not cause harm to US businesses or government.

A day earlier, the US government announced a policy shift in which it would have access to tech giants’ new AI models to evaluate them before they are released. The IMF warned that emerging and developing countries, “which often have more severe resource constraints, may be disproportionately exposed to attackers targeting regions with weaker defenses.” The risks, the authors said, were systemic, cut across sectors and came with the threat of contagion, with the reliance on a small number of platforms and cloud providers likely to increase “the impact of any single exploited weakness.” “Defenses will inevitably be breached, so resilience must also be a priority, specifically to limit how far incidents spread and ensure rapid recovery,” the report said.

IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva warned last month that the global financial system was not ready for the cybersecurity threats posed by AI. “We are very keen to see more attention to the guardrails that are necessary to protect financial stability in a world of AI,” she told CBS News, seeking global collaboration on the issue.

Generative artificial intelligence is being used by 17.8 percent of the world’s working-age population, but the gap between wealthy and developing nations continues to widen, according to a report published Tuesday by Microsoft. In the first quarter of 2026, 27.5 percent of people aged 15-64 in developed countries used a generative AI tool, compared with 15.4 percent in the developing worlda gap that widened by 1.5 percentage points from the second half of 2025, according to the report’s estimates.

The divide stems from significant inequality in access to Internet connectivity, basic digital skills and electricity, according to the Microsoft AI Economy Institute. AI model performance—historically stronger in English as most of the major AI companies are based in the US—is also slowing the spread of such tools in non-English-speaking countries. But progress in processing non-European languages is fueling a catch-up in adoption in some countries, particularly in Asia, the US tech giantnoted.