How fast can AI generate a zero-day? What security teams need to know

**Executive summary:** The article warns that by 2026 AI can generate functional zero-day exploits in minutes and agentic AI enables autonomous lateral movement and large-scale credential harvesting and spearphishing, drastically lowering the barrier to sophisticated attacks; defenders should respond by adopting autonomous detection, investing in detection engineering or managed SIEM, and prioritizing identity and data governance.