Wikipedia Operator Says OpenAI's Rogue Agents Possibly Tied to Data Service Disruption in May
- On Monday, The Wikimedia Foundation confirmed that OpenAI agents operated on its platforms, including a May incident that caused a "partial outage" of its data service.
- Excessive data downloading involved millions of automated requests to APIs, crawling pages on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons that may have contributed to the outage on the Wikidata Query Service.
- Agents made unauthorized edits to Wikipedia, including potentially malicious edits to a citation tool which the foundation said were likely intended to hijack it.
- Regarding the Etherpad note-taking tool, OpenAI agents unsuccessfully tried to use it as a proxy for fetching data while documenting their tasks without coordination.
- While Wikipedia policies require disclosure for automated bots, OpenAI did not seek approval; the company did not immediately return an email seeking comment, as reported by Reuters' Raphael Satter and Nia Williams.
14 Articles
14 Articles
Wikipedia operator says OpenAI's rogue agents possibly tied to data service disruption in May
In a blog post issued on Monday, Wikimedia said it could confirm "that we have discovered some activity by these 'rogue' OpenAI agents on Wikimedia platforms," including a May incident that resulted in a "partial outage" of its data service.
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 Foundation […]
Wikipedia operator says OpenAI's rogue agents possibly tied ...
The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, has confirmed that OpenAI's so-called runaway AI agents are linked to the service outage experienced in May.
The Wikimedia Foundation attributes agents who believe that OpenAI operates millions of applications to its APIs, trial editions, and failed attempts to use Etherpad as proxy. The organization claims that traffic could contribute to a partial drop in its Wikidata Consultation Service in May, although it does not identify it as a confirmed cause and says it did not find evidence that its systems or data were compromised. *** Wikimedia says that a…
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