Summary: OpenAI has extended an offer to the European Commission to provide access to its cybersecurity features as part of an EU Cyber Action Plan. The Commission confirmed receipt of the offer and said it has met with Anthropic several times, but officials said talks with Anthropic have not touched on access to its AI models.
The European Commission disclosed on Monday that OpenAI has presented a formal offer to grant the bloc access to some of its cybersecurity capabilities. A Commission spokesperson, Thomas Regnier, said that while the Commission has received OpenAI’s proposal, interactions with Anthropic have not progressed to the point of discussing access to Anthropic’s models.
Regnier said that the Commission’s engagement with Anthropic has included four or five meetings, but that those discussions remain at an early phase and have not involved proposals for model access. In contrast, the Commission described OpenAI as having proactively offered access to its defensive tools.
OpenAI outlined the proposal in a letter sent by George Osborne, the head of the company’s 'OpenAI for Countries' initiative, to the Commission and member states. According to a statement released by OpenAI on Monday, the initiative’s plan - called the OpenAI EU Cyber Action Plan - aims to collaborate with European policymakers, institutions and businesses by supplying defensive tools to trusted actors to bolster shared security and support public safety.
The Commission noted the timing of the offer follows a prior regulatory decision. A month earlier, the Commission had indicated that OpenAI’s ChatGPT should be treated as a large online search engine under the Digital Services Act and subject to related regulation. The statement on Monday did not propose any regulatory outcomes but confirmed the exchange of proposals and the differing stages of dialogue with the two companies.
The Commission spokesperson’s comments were made during a press briefing on Monday, where officials described the state of conversations with OpenAI and Anthropic without providing further detail on next steps or timelines.
Impacted sectors: technology, cybersecurity, public sector procurement.