ChatGPT maker said Tuesday that its artificial intelligence system hacked into another AI company on its own in what the company called an 鈥渦nprecedented cyber incident.鈥�
鈥淲e had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models,鈥� OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement posted on social media.
AI startup Hugging Face said last week that it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems that it suspected was caused by an AI agent autonomously acting on its own.
鈥淲e suspected last week鈥檚 cyberattack might have come from a frontier lab, given the sophistication of the agent,鈥� Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Cl茅ment Delangue said in a statement. “Turns out it did!鈥�
The disclosure comes amid heightened concerns about the cybersecurity capabilities of powerful models that led President Donald Trump in June to sign an executive order creating a framework for the federal government to vet the national security risks of the most advanced for up to a month before their public release.
鈥淎I is accelerating the discovery and exploitation of vulnerabilities,鈥� OpenAI said in its statement Tuesday. 鈥淭he primary lesson from this incident is that model security and safety must keep pace with rapidly advancing capabilities.鈥�
Delangue said he spent the past 24 hours working with OpenAI, 鈥渁nd we strongly believe there was no malicious intent on their part. It鈥檚 quite mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously!”
Delangue added that it 鈥渕ight be the first incident of its kind.鈥�
OpenAI said the intrusion was caused by a combination of its AI models, including its newly released GPT鈥�5.6 Sol and an 鈥渆ven more capable鈥� model that is still being tested internally.
OpenAI said its AI used stolen credentials and discovered a previously unknown vulnerability to access Hugging Face servers.
It went to 鈥渆xtreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal鈥� and 鈥渇ound ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation,鈥� the company said.
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