Bank of America brought in 1000 contractors to support 3000 internal staff to patch software flaws uncovered by Anthropic's Mythos model earlier this year.
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Banks and regulators around the world were forced to scramble as they reacted to the fallout from the release of Mythos earlier this year. The small group of large US banks that initially secured access to the model uncovered scores of vulnerabilities, prompting a rush to carry out repairs and software upgrades.
Speaking to CNBC after BofA's third-quarter earnings release, CEO Brian Moynihan revealed the scale of the effort, saying: “We put on 1000 contractors to help us do the patching work in the second quarter, and those people remain here today, helping us, on top of the 3000 people we have in that area.”
BofA spent a "couple of hundred million plus" on that work and regulatory issues relating to anti-money laundering compliance in Q3, Moynihan told analysts. Earlier this week, the bank was slapped with a $1.2 billion penalty for its "deficient and ineffective" AML processes.
However, the costs of dealing with the Mythos fallout are expected to decline over time, he says: “Once you patch, you don’t have to patch as much...The pipeline moves through.”
Elsewhere, AI is helping the bank cut costs, with savings from more than 100 projects expected to rise from $300 million this year to $700 million in 2027.