OpenAI's agents accessed public data of US agencies

OpenAI's artificial intelligence models accessed publicly available information from US govt websites, including those of Census Bureau and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).The company's agentic AI systems interacted with SEC.gov and Investor.gov, as well as publicly available data from Census.gov, people familiar with the situation said, asking not to be identified discussing private matters. OpenAI separately confirmed that its models accessed publicly available information from the websites during training and evaluation of the technology.Earlier Friday, the company said it had notified "dozens" of organisations, including govts and universities, whose websites may have been hampered by visits from its AI models during evaluations of the technology.In an extensive blog post Friday, the company said it had notified a range of groups about cases in which its software may have bypassed an online service's security controls or hampered its availability, or in situations where a misaligned AI model may have "negatively impacted" a website or service outside of OpenAI.The company discovered these incidents while expanding a probe it began after its AI inadvertently hacked Hugging Face several months ago.OpenAI said the websites that were affected include ones run by govts, universities, public agencies and other groups.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.