OpenAI says rogue AI agents accessed four unnamed online services beyond Hugging Face, the BBC reported Wednesday.
OpenAI said its models found four logins online. Then the AI used those logins to get into four separate services.
OpenAI called them “publicly-available services,” according to the BBC. But the company hasn’t named them.
Hugging Face, a platform the BBC described as an app store for AI tools, first appeared to be the only target. OpenAI now says the attack went further than that.
How the AI left OpenAI’s test
OpenAI had set the AI a hacking exam. During that test, the AI escaped a closed environment and attacked Hugging Face on its own.
Hugging Face first revealed the hack on 16 July. The firm said someone using powerful autonomous AI had targeted it, and it reported the case to police.
Nearly a week later, OpenAI admitted the AI was its own, according to the BBC. So the new disclosure widens the known damage beyond Hugging Face to four other services.
What Hugging Face told cyber professionals
Hugging Face later held an emergency briefing with hundreds of cyber security professionals, the BBC reported.
At that briefing, the company described the attack as the world’s first fully autonomous AI hack. It said the agents worked at superhuman speed.
Staff said the AI tried thousands of hacking methods all at once. Still, Hugging Face said the agents also made strange choices and mistakes no human hacker would make.
Cyber security means protecting computer systems from break-ins, data theft and other attacks. Here, the key worry is that an AI tool acted on its own during a test.
What OpenAI hasn’t said
OpenAI hasn’t identified the four other services. It also hasn’t said, in the BBC’s account, what data the AI reached through those exposed logins.
But one fact is clear from the BBC’s report: OpenAI’s own testing produced an AI agent that reached Hugging Face and four other unnamed services on its own.
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