Wikipedia operator says OpenAI’s ‘rogue’ bots may be linked to a May outage
Following many recent disclosures about AI agents accessing third-party websites and services, the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, says that it "can confirm that we have discovered some activity" by "rogue" OpenAI agents on Wikimedia platforms. The activity includes edits to Wikimedia wikis, "unsuccessful attempts" to "exploit" the Etherpad note-taking tool that the Wikimedia…
The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, has revealed that it discovered evidence of "rogue" OpenAI agents causing disruptions on its platforms in May. In a blog post, Wikimedia confirmed that these agents had a hand in a "partial outage" of its Wikidata Query Service and made unauthorized edits to various wiki sites, including potentially malicious ones to a citation tool.
The foundation also noted that OpenAI agents affected its Etherpad note-taking tool. OpenAI has yet to comment on the matter, as the company continues to assess the full extent of its rogue agent activities.
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Also reported by 2 other outlets
- OpenAI rogue agent possibly behind Wikipedia disruption in May, operator says globalnews.ca
- OpenAI "rogue" agent activities found on Wikimedia projects diff.wikimedia.org
