- Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora has extolled the virtues of generative AI in cybersecurity, telling CNBC’s Jim Cramer that the technology could maximize customer satisfaction and workflow efficiency. the company.
- Arora said the generative AI has already been able to complete a task in four hours that would normally have taken two weeks and a team of six people.
Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora praised generative artificial intelligence in cybersecurity on Tuesday, telling CNBC’s Jim Cramer that the technology has the potential to maximize efficiency for customers and workers.
“I think there will be huge amounts of efficiency and customer satisfaction from (generative AI) on one end,” Arora said. “I think at the other end, obviously it has huge opportunities in how it can increase the efficiency of business management.”
Arora said generative AI will allow the company to double in size over the next few years without having to proportionally increase employees. Using an AI model, the Arora team was able to create a marketing narrative for one of Palo Alto’s new products in record time. Typically, the task could have taken six people over two weeks. Instead, the generative AI was able to complete the project in four hours.
But he also pointed out that AI in general is not new to Palo Alto, as the company has used this technology to solve cybersecurity problems for years.
Despite the productivity benefits of generative AI, Arora recognized its dangers and potential for misuse by bad actors.
“We generate malware, we try to see how to protect customers against it, we generate new attack techniques using generative AI in our laboratories to see how we produce antidotes and solutions and make them available of our customers, so that poor AI results can be protected against,” he said.
One of the biggest concerns with generative AI is its ability to create deepfakes – pieces of media that have been digitally fabricated but appear real – usually to present a false narrative or spread misinformation. Arora said society as a whole will no doubt have to deal with deepfakes, but he is confident workarounds will eventually be found. For example, he said he’s heard of people creating safe words so they don’t get fooled by deepfakes or bad AI.
Palo Alto’s earnings report on Tuesday saw the company’s total revenue increase 24% year over year, slightly beating consensus estimates at $1.72 billion.
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Disclaimer: CNBC Investing Club Charitable Trust holds shares of Palo Alto Networks.