WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) - Apple ( AAPL ) said it is

pushing forward a series of software updates that would

previously have been bundled with a new version of its iOS

operating system, making them available earlier than in previous

cycles in response to AI-driven security concerns.

The company told Reuters on Monday it was adapting to the

reality that, given the ability of artificial intelligence to

speed the development of malicious hacking tools, it needed to

reduce the time between when updates were first made public and

when they were put into customers' hands.

The shift marks a notable change in Apple's ( AAPL ) longstanding

practice of packaging security fixes with broader software

releases, an acknowledgment that AI is compressing the window

attackers need to exploit known flaws.

Unless security experts discover a hacking campaign targeting a

previously unknown software flaw, Apple ( AAPL ) usually releases

security updates as part of a move from one version of iOS to

the next, for example from the currently available version -

26.5 - to the next planned update, 26.6. In the interim,

developers and other testers trial the next update to iron out

any kinks.

The company said that, instead, the latest round of security

updates were being made available to everyone ahead of the wider

release of 26.6.

It said that while there was no evidence that any of the

newly patched vulnerabilities had been taken advantage of, the

time between the point when security fixes were first announced

and when they were deployed to customers' phones needed to be

compressed.