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Wikipedia operator says OpenAI's rogue agents possibly tied to data service disruption in May
Wikimedia said the agents made millions of requests, and 65% of its heaviest traffic came from bots last year.
- On Monday, The Wikimedia Foundation reported discovering unauthorized activity from agents it believes are operated by OpenAI, including wiki edits, failed hacking attempts, and heavy automated traffic that potentially contributed to a May service outage.
- The foundation revealed that agents posted "malicious edits" intended to repurpose a citation tool as a proxy, while also making unsuccessful attempts to compromise the Wikipedia Etherpad note-taking tool.
- Agents submitted millions of automated API requests and crawled millions of pages across Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; bandwidth consumption rose 50% in 2025, with bots responsible for 65% of the heaviest traffic loads.
- Selena Deckelmann, the foundation's chief product and technology officer, warned "AI companies are not doing enough to secure their systems," while OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company appreciated Wikimedia's "detailed findings."
- Wikimedia expressed deep concern about "rogue" AI agents on open platforms built by volunteers; in over a half-dozen cases, agents engaged in activities that would warrant criminal charges if performed by humans.
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106 Articles
OpenAI has stated that it has not yet found evidence of its IE agents' involvement in the spring disruption of Wikimedia Foundation resources. The company has not yet found evidence of the connection between the activities of its artificial intelligence agents and the May breakdown of the Wikipedia operator's resources, transmitting RIA News. "The investigation has not established that the company's activities affected Wikimedia's work in May," …
The out-of-control OpenAI agents had unauthorized activities on Wikimedia's Wikimedia portals, a Foundation managing Wikipedia, which the Foundation itself reported on in its blog.
·Riga, Latvia
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Coverage Details
Total News Sources106
Leaning Left14Leaning Right14Center12Last UpdatedBias Distribution35% Left, 35% Right
Bias Distribution
- 35% of the sources lean Left, 35% of the sources lean Right
35% Right
L 35%
C 30%
R 35%
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