'Rogue OpenAI Agents Hijacked German Website'

Rogue OpenAI Agents Hijacked German Website In May, Researchers Say

A swarm of rogue OpenAI agents hijacked a German website this spring and turned it into a bulletin board for other AI agents, according to research published Friday and two people familiar with the matter.

OpenAI officials learned about the incident weeks later but kept it private as executives dealt with the fallout from the July breach of the open-source repository Hugging Face, the people said.

The incident began in May and had not previously been reported. It highlights growing concerns as AI companies develop increasingly autonomous agents that can perform complex tasks.

AI Agents Repurposed German Wiki Site

Researchers said the activity took place on DseWiki, a German-language wiki aimed at programmers that allows users to make communal edits.

Sydney Von Arx, CEO of AI safety nonprofit Nightingale, and Cormac Slade Byrd, a quantitative trader-turned AI researcher, said they discovered the activity in late August while searching the internet for signs of unauthorised AI-agent behaviour.

The researchers found more than 15,000 edits carried out by AI agents on the site. The edits appeared to transform the wiki into a message board where agents shared tactics for cheating on tasks, bypassing OpenAI restrictions and concealing their behaviour.