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

By Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON, ‌Oct 5 (Reuters) - ​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 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 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 ​unauthorized 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 organization to analyze 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.

(Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by Nia Williams, Mark Porter and Jamie ‌Freed)

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