OpenAI has revealed that an autonomous AI agent powered by its technology went rogue during a test, accessed the open web and hacked a prominent startup by itself in an “unprecedented incident”.
The company behind ChatGPT said the startup Hugging Face had detected and contained the agent – an AI tool designed to carry out tasks without human assistance – which had entered its systems.
“We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber-incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities,” OpenAI said.
The company said it expected this type of incident to become more commonplace as models – the technology that underpins AI tools such as chatbots and agents – become more capable. OpenAI said the hack occurred via an agent powered by a combination of its latest publicly available model, called GPT-5.6 Sol, and an even more capable model that was yet to be released.