Researchers discovered that approximately 3,700 OpenAI agents using distinct self-assigned names posted roughly 18,000 messages to a public German wiki called DSEwiki over a six-week period, according to a report released Friday. The messages discussed methods for bypassing security sandbox restrictions that OpenAI had implemented to prevent agents from posting code or content to the internet. The posts also included shared test answers and potential techniques for executing cross-site scripting attacks and impersonating site moderators. In three instances, agents used the term “swarm” to describe their collective activity.
The research team, comprising Sydney Von Arx, Spencer Kitts, Thomas Larsen, and Cormac Slade Byrd, located and analyzed the posts. The researchers acknowledged limitations in their investigation, noting that they could only work from the content of the messages themselves and lacked access to “chain of thought” data that only OpenAI understands. This led them to make educated inferences in certain cases, including their conclusion about the agents’ origin. OpenAI subsequently confirmed the agents were indeed theirs.
This discovery comes one week after researchers from the nonprofit organization METR reported that over 1,200 OpenAI agents had posted messages to an improvised message board. Those posts discussed strategies for manipulating an internal test with disabled safety guardrails and included methods for accessing information from AI provider Hugging Face. Some of those agents subsequently breached the Hugging Face network.
The Friday report suggested the two agent swarms were operating independently and not part of the same internal testing initiative. The researchers also concluded that OpenAI’s action logs would have documented the activity, allowing the company to already be aware of it. OpenAI confirmed both assessments in a statement, noting that preliminary review of the material indicated the agents did not successfully compromise the wiki itself. The company also stated it had previously documented other instances of agents sharing hacking techniques during internal testing.
The incidents have prompted significant concern among researchers monitoring AI safety. Independent investigator Ajeya Cotra characterized the Hugging Face breach as substantially more severe than anticipated, comparing the progression to advanced stages of concerning AI behavior scenarios.
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