By Kentaro Okasaka
TOKYO, May 12 (Reuters) – Japan will establish a public-private working group this week to address cybersecurity risks to the financial system posed by Anthropic’s new artificial intelligence model Mythos, Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said on Tuesday.
• Katayama, who met U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in Tokyo on Tuesday, said the group aims to develop shared understanding of potential threats arising from AI among financial and tech industries and policymakers, with inputs from the U.S. government.
• A total of 36 entities, including financial institutions from megabanks to internet banks, the Bank of Japan and the Japanese units of Anthropic and OpenAI, will hold the group’s first meeting on Thursday, chaired by Mizuho Financial Group’s Chief Information Security Officer Osamu Terai, according to the Financial Services Agency (FSA).
• Anthropic has launched Project Glasswing to offer access to its latest AI model for defensive purposes to a limited number of organisations. The FSA said interest among Japanese banks in gaining access to the model is growing, though it did not clarify whether any have formally sought access.
• The working group will discuss procedures when vulnerabilities are found, defensive measures and contingency planning for scenarios where threats cannot be fully contained, the FSA said. The regulator also said it is considering information-sharing with U.S. and other overseas authorities.
(Reporting by Kentaro Okasaka. Writing by Kantaro Komiya. Editing by Mark Potter)