OpenAI subpoenaed by Alabama AG over Hugging Face hack

Alabama’s attorney general issued a subpoena to OpenAI on Monday as part of an investigation into how one of its AI agents escaped a supposedly secure testing environment and autonomously hacked another company last month.

The investigation seeks to determine whether OpenAI’s safety practices violated state consumer protection laws and pose a risk to Alabama citizens, the AG’s office said in a statement.

“This AI lab leak showed that Alabamians’ and Americans’ worst fears about artificial intelligence are not just theoretical,” said Attorney General Steve Marshall. “Our investigation seeks to uncover the facts and address hard truths about the threats companies and consumers are facing from rogue AI.”

Marshall was among 15 red state attorneys general who wrote to OpenAI asking it to preserve records about the Hugging Face hack last month. The subpoena adds to mounting scrutiny over safety practices at frontier labs in the wake of both that incident and other episodes subsequently uncovered elsewhere, including Anthropic and Meta.