OpenAI Has to Answer to Alabama on Hugging Face Hack

OpenAI’s general attitude towards the fact that one of its AI models went rogue and hacked into the systems of the open-source AI platform Hugging Face has been, “That’s our bad, but you gotta admit, it’s pretty cool, right?” The Attorney General of Alabama’s answer to that is a pretty resounding “No.” On Monday, Alabama AG Steve Marshall announced that he had launched an investigation into the incident and is demanding that OpenAI respond.

To encourage that cooperation in the state’s investigation, Marshall issued a subpoena calling on the company to provide a slew of information around the incident. Among the details Alabama would like to see: all documents related to the Hugging Face hack and details on the model testing that resulted in it, details of every employee involved in the model’s training, names of anyone who raised concerns about the training before the incident, and all the details of OpenAI’s safety measures used in the training process.

OpenAI will have until September 14, 2026 to comply with the state’s demands, so expect its lawyers to be quite busy for the next few weeks. Gizmodo reached out to OpenAI for comment regarding the subpoena, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.