As the skills gap in cybersecurity persists, OpenAI, the AI firm behind ChatGPT, has disrupted at least five online influence operations (IO) in the previous three months.

OpenAI claimed to have successfully disrupted internet IOs from Russia, China, Iran, and Israel in a blog post that was posted yesterday, May 30.

OpenAI said that its ChatGPT tool has been used in numerous disrupted IOs to create online comments, lengthy form pieces, and headlines that were intended to disseminate false information and incite online argument.

Geopolitical tensions, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and US and EU politics, had been the main source of gasoline for the IOs.

Using OpenAI’s models, the disrupting Chinese IO known as Spamouflage was able to watch and monitor social media activity in the Korean, English, Chinese, and Japanese languages. It monitored activity on blogspot, Medium, X, and other websites.

OpenAI said that in an effort to help the larger security research community, it has provided information regarding disrupted IOs with other industry insiders.

Research and analysis firm GlobalData discovered that cybersecurity job openings have increased into 2023 and 2024 in its 2024 thematic intelligence report on the subject.

Over the past two years, there has been a sharp increase in demand for cybersecurity workers, with job openings often exceeding 100,000 each month since July 2021.

Although there were 5.5 million cybersecurity professionals in the world in 2023, demand for personnel remained higher than supply.

Going forward, GlobalData predicts that this difference will keep growing as GenAI becomes more prevalent.

According to GlobalData, the cybersecurity market as a whole will be valued over $290 billion by 2027, growing at a rate of 13% year from 2022.

By 2027, services are projected to make up around 37% of cybersecurity’s global revenue, with software forecast to account for 44% of the industry.