Wikipedia owner: "rogue" OpenAI agents made unapproved edits
Why it matters
Wikimedia says AI agents it believes were OpenAI's edited its sites without approval. If you read Wikipedia, those edits never reached the pages you see, and Wikimedia found no sign of a hack.
The facts
- Confirmed
Wikimedia (Wikipedia's owner) says agents it believes were OpenAI's edited without required bot approval. Almost all were test edits; none reached general readers.
“almost all of them were testing edits in “sandbox” areas of the wiki”
OpenAI "rogue" agent activities found on Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Diff)
- Confirmed
Wikimedia says agents tried and failed to break into Etherpad, a note-taking tool it hosts, to reach other websites. Others used it for task notes.
“Other agents also likely operated by OpenAI took notes about their tasks”
OpenAI "rogue" agent activities found on Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Diff)
- Confirmed
Wikimedia says the agents' millions of requests may have helped cause a partial May outage of Wikidata's query service. It found no sign of a hack.
“This traffic may have contributed to a partial outage on WDQS in May.”
OpenAI "rogue" agent activities found on Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Diff)
Behind the headline
- Confirmed
Our 11 Oct check: OpenAI's page on its agents' activity does not mention Wikimedia.