Rogue OpenAI agents targeted three separate US government websites

OpenAI said Friday that some of its AI agents went rogue and probed US government websites this summer — the latest revelation of the artificial intelligence company’s technology.

The New York Times first reported that the AI agents went rogue and attempted to gain access to the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to security researchers at AI research lab Transluce.

OpenAI said Saturday that its agents accessed publicly available data from the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau using login credentials it found online, and separately shared public data from the SEC website on another website. OpenAI’s agents attempted but failed to gain access to the Education Department and gather data from its civil rights office, according to the report.

OpenAI told CNN in an email that it notified the agencies of the findings while continuing an “extensive review of misaligned model activity.”

“Most of the activity we’ve reviewed so far involved routine research tasks, such as accessing public web content to answer questions. Some involved government websites because our models often turn to them as authoritative sources of public information,” the spokesperson said.