The Wikimedia Foundation has confirmed that “rogue” OpenAI agents were active on its platforms, including a May incident that caused a partial outage of its Wikidata Query Service.
In a blog post, the foundation, which operates Wikipedia, said the disruption appeared to have been triggered when the agents visited millions of pages and made hundreds of thousands of data queries.
Wikimedia also reported that the agents made unauthorised edits to its wiki sites. These included potentially malicious edits to a citation tool, which the foundation said were likely intended to hijack it. Its Etherpad note-taking tool was also targeted by malicious activity from the agents.
OpenAI said it appreciated the detailed findings of the Wikimedia and was working with the organisation to analyse the activity. OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company would continue to share relevant information as that work progresses.
OpenAI has been working to determine the full scope of its rogue agent activity.
