G7 to launch exercises to guard against AI cyber attacks

By Leika Kihara

BANGKOK, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Finance leaders of the G7 grouping agreed to hold tabletop exercises to guard against AI cyber attacks, Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said, as policymakers increasingly seek to coordinate responses to growing cyber security risks.

The agreement comes after the International Monetary Fund warned this week that confidence could be undermined by an AI-enabled cyber attack on a critical service of a financial institution.

"The G7 finance deputies had been discussing the idea of doing tabletop exercises on frontier AI, which was signed off at the ministerial level," Katayama told reporters on Thursday.

She made the remarks after attending a meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors of the G7 advanced economies held on the sidelines of the IMF's annual gathering in Bangkok, the Thai capital.

The plan will feature simulations evolved by G7 finance authorities to test how they can respond to AI-driven cyber attacks, said a Japanese finance ministry official who attended the finance leaders' meeting.

The results will test effectiveness of existing protocols and be used to revise manuals to better tackle such incidents, the official told reporters.

The exercises by G7 finance ministries and central banks could include private financial institutions depending on the nature of simulations, the official added.

Banking regulators globally are stepping up efforts to contain growing AI risks, Reuters reported, with some pointing to the potential for cyberattacks on banks or rogue agents undermining global financial stability.

Among them is the Bank of England, which is working with banks on deep cyber-recovery options, its deputy governor said on Thursday, adding that they can no longer assume their defences are immune to AI-enabled cyberattacks.

(Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)