Continuing on the heels of offering $1M grants for AI democratisation, OpenAI is back again with another million grant – this time for cybersecurity. OpenAI has launched their new Cybersecurity Grant Program which aims to help and enable the creation and advancement of AI-powered cybersecurity tools and technologies. 

With a series of announcements inviting people’s contribution, OpenAI is going down the route of open source without open sourcing their product. 

In a move to unite the ‘defenders’ to form a robust system to counter cyber threats, the Cybersecurity Grant Program aims to work with individuals and organisations who can help propose such a system. By doing so, they believe that the power of cybersecurity moves from attackers to defenders. The program aims to empower defenders by giving them access to the latest and most advanced AI capabilities, and in the process develop methods and metrics to assess the capabilities of AI-based cybersecurity systems. 

Reiterating Initiatives 

This is not the first time OpenAI has invited people to help with their cybersecurity features. In April, the company ran a Bug Bounty Program that invited people to report vulnerabilities, bugs and security flaws in their ChatGPT model. The company specifically called out security researchers, ethical hackers and technology enthusiasts to come forward to participate. However, the reward money for the program ranged from $200 to $20,000 depending on the severity of the discovery. 

OpenAI has also mentioned that CyberSecurity Program shall be ‘licensed or distributed for maximal public benefit and sharing.’ This could be hinting at a future where they might offer these learnings to the broader community in any way they deem necessary. 

It is interesting to note that OpenAI is choosing a smart system of not spending resources internally to come up with mechanisms for building a secure system instead choosing an open-source- like method. By crowdsourcing crucial elements such as AI regulation frameworks and cybersecurity threats, the company is likely to seem compliant and adhering to people for their greater good. All these actions are taking form after the recent Senate hearings. The company was also rumoured to start their own open source model, however there has been no details on the same.