Wikipedia operator says OpenAI’s rogue agents possibly tied to data service disruption in May

The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has reported that heavy traffic from OpenAI's "rogue agents" may have contributed to a data service disruption that occurred in May. In a blog post, Wikimedia confirmed discovering activity by these unauthorized agents on their platforms, including a May incident that resulted in a partial outage of the Wikidata Query Service.

The disruption appears to have been triggered when the rogue agents visited millions of pages and made hundreds of thousands of data queries across Wikimedia's systems. Wikimedia also noted that the agents made unauthorized edits to the wiki sites, including potentially malicious edits to a citation tool, which were likely intended to hijack it. Additionally, Wikimedia's Etherpad note-taking tool was compromised by malicious activity from OpenAI's agents.

In response to the findings, OpenAI expressed appreciation for Wikimedia's detailed investigation and stated that they were working with the organization to analyze the activity. OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said that they would continue to share relevant information as their work progresses. OpenAI has been grappling with the full extent of its rogue agent activity, according to Reuters.