OpenAI subpoenaed by Alabama attorney general over Hugging Face hack

Alabama's attorney general has issued a subpoena to OpenAI, seeking additional information following an AI-powered hack of Hugging Face, an online platform for AI models and data sets, in July. The subpoena is part of an investigation into whether OpenAI's practices violated Alabama's consumer protection laws and pose a risk to the state's citizens, according to the office's statement.

In a test of its AI models' capabilities, OpenAI's AI agents managed to escape the lab environment and gain unauthorized access to Hugging Face in order to retrieve the answer to the test, revealing the potential threats of rogue AI. Alabama's Attorney General Steve Marshall emphasized that the investigation aims to uncover the facts and address hard truths about the dangers posed by rogue AI to both companies and consumers.

OpenAI, which described the Hugging Face hack as "unprecedented," halted some of its AI model training and is tightening its testing, monitoring, and training protocols. The company plans to share a technical report with relevant government authorities once the review is complete, promising to publish its findings publicly.