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MI5 launched the AI Threat Assessment Centre (AITAC) in 2026 to give the UK government a single, cross-agency view of national-security risks from artificial intelligence. The announcement came as OpenAI told MPs it could not guarantee that all previously disclosed safety incidents were known, leaving open the possibility of further disclosures.
What MI5’s AI Threat Assessment Centre is
MI5 Director General Sir Ken McCallum announced AITAC on 13 October 2026. It is housed within MI5 and brings together specialists from the AI Security Institute (AISI), the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
AITAC is not a new AI model, consumer service or operational military unit. Its job is to produce all-source assessments of AI-related national-security threats for government departments. “All-source” means officials can combine intelligence, policing information, cyber expertise and technical analysis rather than relying on a single agency’s evidence.
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The centre is intended to help officials separate credible evidence from speculation and make decisions faster. MI5 describes its remit as covering both immediate misuse by people and longer-term dangers from autonomous or misaligned systems.
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That gives AITAC two different kinds of work: assessing incidents that are already occurring, and judging how emerging capabilities could change the risk to the UK. The launch announcement describes the centre’s remit; it does not claim that AITAC has prevented an attack.
Why MI5 is concerned about AI
AI-assisted reconnaissance and drones
McCallum said MI5 had caught terrorists trying to use AI to improve reconnaissance and attack methods. He added that AI-enabled drones create “a new twist” for investigators and security services.
This is an observed misuse claim from MI5, not a prediction that every terrorist group has access to advanced autonomous weapons. It shows why the agency is treating AI as a practical enabler of existing threats: software can help an adversary process information, plan routes or adapt tactics even when the underlying operation remains human-directed.
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Biological knowledge and novel pathogens
MI5 also warned that AI could lower the barriers to dangerous biological knowledge or assist in generating novel pathogens. These are risk scenarios used to explain why the centre is looking beyond cyberattacks and disinformation.
No source cited for the announcement says that an AI-generated pathogen or AI-enabled biological attack has occurred. The distinction matters: the biological concern is about a potentially reduced barrier to harmful capability, not evidence of a completed incident.
Autonomous or misaligned systems
McCallum described a more speculative but potentially profound problem: “Human history has given us no experience of facing an actor which is smarter than we are. Is capable of out-thinking us. This is genuinely novel.” In context, he was warning about systems that could act with substantial autonomy or whose objectives might not remain aligned with human instructions.
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That statement is a description of an unfamiliar risk category, not a claim that such a system currently controls an operation. AITAC’s role is to assess how quickly that risk is changing and what evidence should trigger government action.
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What OpenAI told MPs
The AITAC announcement coincided with a House of Commons hearing reported on 16 October 2026. Representatives of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and Meta were questioned about whether voluntary safeguards can keep pace with more capable AI systems.
No assurance that all incidents are public
Tom Duff Gordon, OpenAI’s head of policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, was asked whether incidents already disclosed by the company represented the complete set. He replied: “I cannot assure the committee or you, Chair, that that is it.” He also said he knew of “a handful of others.”
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Those remarks leave open the possibility of additional disclosures, but they do not provide a verified number. “A handful” should not be converted into a precise incident count, and the contemporaneous report does not establish how many cases exist, what happened in each case or whether every case involved a deployed model.
What OpenAI said it would do with government evidence
Sky News reported that Duff Gordon said OpenAI would investigate urgently if MI5, MI6, GCHQ or AISI presented evidence that a model was unsafe or had been used by a bad actor. That describes a company investigation and remediation response. It does not give OpenAI law-enforcement powers or make the company the authority that decides the national-security consequences.
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The hearing and the launch illustrate a division of responsibility. Government agencies assess threats across society and can coordinate intelligence, policing and national-security responses. AI companies monitor their own systems, investigate reports and change models or safeguards.
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| Comparison point | AITAC | AI company safety teams |
|---|---|---|
| Institutional role | MI5-hosted centre combining AISI, NCA and NCSC expertise for government assessments. | Internal functions responsible for testing, monitoring, investigating and remediating a company’s models. |
| Threat coverage | Human misuse, terrorism, cyber and state threats, biological risks, and longer-term autonomous-system risks. | Primarily the behaviour and misuse of the company’s own products and models, plus information received about them. |
| Evidence base | All-source assessment drawing on intelligence, policing and technical sources. | Company testing, monitoring, incident reports and outside evidence supplied to the company. |
| Transparency | AITAC assessments are produced for government departments; the launch announcement did not publish a full methodology or case list. | Public disclosures depend on what the company chooses or is required to report; the Commons testimony shows that the public record may not be complete. |
| Response authority | Supports departments that can use government, regulatory, policing or security powers. | Can investigate, restrict, modify or withdraw its own systems, but does not set national-security policy. |
| Safeguard basis | Embedded in a government security structure. | Voluntary corporate safeguards were the subject of MPs’ questions at the hearing. |
The wider UK security context
MI5 said its state-threat caseload had quadrupled over the previous decade. It also said that in 2026 it was devoting more resources to countering state threats than at any point during the Cold War.
Since the start of 2020, MI5 and police have disrupted 19 late-stage attack plots, according to figures cited by MI5. Those figures provide the security backdrop for AITAC, but they are not measures of AI incidents and do not show that AI caused any of the plots.
What is established, and what is not
- Established: AITAC was launched in 2026, is housed in MI5 and combines AISI, NCA and NCSC expertise.
- Established: MI5 is investigating current misuse such as AI-assisted reconnaissance and drones, while assessing biological and autonomy-related risks.
- Established: OpenAI’s representative told MPs he could not guarantee that all previously disclosed incidents were the only ones.
- Not established: A definitive number of additional OpenAI incidents. The reported “handful” is not a counted statistic.
- Not established: That AI has generated a novel pathogen or that AITAC has already stopped an attack.
What happens next
AITAC gives UK departments a mechanism for pooling evidence as AI capabilities change. Its practical influence will depend on how quickly agencies share information, how clearly assessments distinguish observed events from forecasts, and what action departments take after receiving them.
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