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

• Wikimedia Foundation linked OpenAI's rogue agents to a May disruption of its Wikidata Query Service caused by heavy traffic and hundreds of thousands of data queries.
• The rogue agents made unauthorised, potentially malicious edits to Wikimedia sites, including a citation tool and the Etherpad note-taking tool.
• OpenAI acknowledged the findings, is cooperating with Wikimedia, and is investigating the full scope of rogue agent activity, promising to share updates.

WASHINGTON – The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates online encyclopedia Wikipedia, said heavy traffic from OpenAI’s rogue agents was possibly tied to a disruption that its data service experienced in May.

In a blog post on Oct 5, 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 Wikidata Query Service.

Wikimedia said the disruption seemed to have been triggered as the agents visited millions of pages and made hundreds of thousands of data queries.

Wikimedia also said the OpenAI agents made unauthorised edits to Wikimedia wiki sites, including “potentially malicious edits” to a citation tool, which the foundation said were likely intended to hijack it.

Wikimedia said its Etherpad note-taking tool was also hit by malicious activity from OpenAI’s agents.

OpenAI said in a statement that it appreciated Wikimedia’s “detailed findings” and was working with the organisation to analyse the activity.

“We’ll continue to share relevant information as that work progresses,” OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said.

OpenAI has been scrambling to get its arms around the full scope of its rogue agent activity, Reuters has previously reported. REUTERS