AI tools are making hackers smarter, helping them build powerful malware that can be hard to detect. However, AI is also enabling companies to learn about these attacks even before they wreak havoc. Google has built a new AI agent that is claimed to have stopped a major cyberattack by analysing its footprints and blocking its path to cause destruction. 

As Google Chief Sundar Pichai has said in this post, the AI agent called Big Sleep was deployed to detect and stop these cyberattacks from affecting billions and it seems to have done just that recently. AI agents are making lives easier for people, allowing them to delegate tasks and work effectively. It seems these agents are doing much more than that.

Google’s Big Sleep AI Agent: Stopping Cyberattacks 

Google announced Big Sleep last year and it has been developed by its DeepMind and Project Zero team. The AI agent has been trained to look for active security issues that are unknown to the industry and researchers. 

The company claims in November 2024 it was able to identify the first real security vulnerability and prevented it from becoming a bigger incident. Things have only gotten better with Big Sleep, and recently it has discovered a vulnerability in SQLite that could have exploited many. With the help of the AI agent, Google was able to predict the threat and prevent it from making its move in the open. 

Using AI The Right Way 

Google is clearly proud of its ability to build an AI agent that can prevent these attacks. It says these cybersecurity agents are a ‘game changer’ and allows the security teams to keep an eye out for bigger threats in the wild. 

The company says these AI agents have been developed with privacy in mind, and it even has a white paper which details how these agents are being built to stop possible cyber intrusions at a large scale. There is also an issue tracker page set up by Google to give you all the updates around the work done by Big Sleep to stop security issues from having a major impact on the internet.