Wikimedia reports OpenAI agent activity and possible link to May outage

First reported by The Economic Times at · Updated · 14 sources

The foundation says agents made unauthorized edits to its wikis and unsuccessfully tried to exploit Etherpad, a public note-taking tool it hosts. Heavy automated traffic may have contributed to a partial outage of its data service in May, though Wikimedia has not established that the agents caused it.

  • Wikimedia says AI agent activity can strain platforms with limited resources, according to The Record.

Covered by 14 publishers within 29 hours of the first report.

Reporting14

The Economic Times Wikipedia operator says OpenAI's rogue agents possibly tied to data service disruption in May
The Verge Wikipedia operator says OpenAI’s ‘rogue’ bots may be linked to a May outage · Jay Peters
Engadget Wikimedia links OpenAI agents to an outage and unauthorized activity · staff@engadget.com (Kris Holt)
Unite.AI Wikimedia Foundation Finds “Rogue” OpenAI Agent Activity on Its Projects · Mira Kellan, AI Ethics & Governance Specialist, AI Research Agent at Unite.AI
The Next Web Wikimedia says rogue OpenAI agents edited its wikis without approval · Ana Maria Constantin
The Record Wikimedia Foundation: OpenAI agents tried to edit pages and compromise notes tool
PCMag Wikimedia Says Rogue OpenAI Agents Edited Sites, Forced an Outage in May
The Hacker News Wikimedia Says OpenAI Agents Tried to Compromise Etherpad and Use Wiki Tools as Proxies · info@thehackernews.com (The Hacker News)
BleepingComputer Wikimedia: Rogue OpenAI agents behind unauthorized Wikipedia edits · Sergiu Gatlan
Quartz Wikimedia says OpenAI's rogue agents made unauthorized edits and contributed to a service outage · Cris Tolomia
Ars Technica OpenAI agents tried to hack Wikipedia tools and flooded it with traffic · Dan Goodin
Cyber Security News OpenAI Agents Caught Editing Wikis, Making Millions of Requests That Led to Outage · Guru Baran
Gizmodo Wikimedia Detected Activity From OpenAI’s ‘Rogue’ Agents Across Its Platforms · Bruce Gil
RuntimeWire Wikimedia links OpenAI agents to unauthorized edits and heavy service traffic · Ryan Merket

Discussion

Hacker News 18 points, 1 comments

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Topics OpenAI