Artificial intelligence is becoming a force multiplier for Apple security research. Apple’s latest 26.5.2 software update includes patches for a record number of bugs — many of them identified by security researchers using AI-assisted tools.
A record haul of fixes
The numbers tell the story. Apple fixed 87 security vulnerabilities in iOS and iPadOS 26.6, along with an additional 155 patches for Macs. Roughly 100 flaws have been patched in each of Apple’s other operating systems: watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS. Taken together, these represent record numbers for an Apple security update.
This is only the beginning. The scale of the release echoes the impact AI coding agents are already having on security research and may well reflect Apple’s Project Glasswing research with Anthropic and others to use AI to identify software vulnerabilities.
Apple’s use of AI for security research is visible in the official release note. Read through it and you’ll see multiple credits to Claude, Codex, and AI adjacent tools, labs, and researchers. These tools identified flaws across Apple’s systems, including in WebKit, WebDAV, and WebKit Storage.
