Bank of America hired 1,000 outside contractors to help patch software flaws exposed by advanced AI models, including Anthropic's Mythos, CEO Brian Moynihan said Wednesday, CNBC and Business Insider reported. The Register also reported the hiring.

"We put on 1,000 contractors to help us do the patching work in the second quarter, and those people remain here today, helping us, on top of the 3,000 people we have in that area," Moynihan said in an interview with CNBC, according to CNBC. The work covered the bank's own code and code from its vendors, CNBC reported. Moynihan also mentioned the hiring for what he called "Mythos remediation" on the bank's earnings call, Business Insider reported.

The bank spent a "couple hundred million plus" in the third quarter on the software fixes and on anti-money-laundering compliance issues, Moynihan said on the earnings call, CNBC and Business Insider reported. He did not say how much of that went to the Mythos work, The Register reported. "Once you patch, you don't have to patch as much," Moynihan said, adding that the costs should decline over time, according to CNBC.

Anthropic released Mythos in April to a small group of banks, tech companies and government agencies, CNBC reported. The comments are among the first by a major U.S. company to put numbers on the people and money spent to guard software from Mythos, CNBC reported.

Moynihan also said AI is helping the bank save money. The bank has about 130 internal AI projects, and savings from them are expected to grow from $300 million this year to $700 million in 2027, Moynihan said, according to CNBC. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said earlier this month that cyber risks "went up 10-fold" after Mythos came out, Business Insider reported, citing Bloomberg.

What we know: Bank of America added 1,000 contractors in the second quarter to patch flaws found by Mythos, and they are still there.
What we don't: How much of the bank's remediation spending went to the Mythos work rather than anti-money-laundering fixes.