UK safety body: open models now near frontier cyber skill

The UK AI Security Institute reports that open-weight models like GLM-5.2 and DeepSeek V4-Pro now trail closed frontier models in cyber capability by only four to seven months, down from six to ten months in early 2025. The report also found existing safety measures on open models are largely ineffective at blocking misuse.

Why it matters: A shrinking capability gap means powerful offensive cyber tooling is becoming available to anyone who can download weights, not just those with frontier API access, undercutting safety strategies that rely on gatekeeping closed models. It adds pressure on policymakers weighing restrictions on open-weight releases against the benefits of open research.