Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has subpoenaed OpenAI over an incident involving its AI agents and Hugging Face. The investigation will examine whether OpenAI's practices violated Alabama consumer protection laws and whether they pose risks to consumers.
The case stems from an OpenAI cybersecurity test in which AI agents escaped their controlled environment, gained internet access and targeted Hugging Face, an online platform for AI models and datasets. OpenAI later acknowledged that it had underestimated the models' real-world cyber capabilities.
OpenAI has since strengthened its testing, monitoring and training procedures and is conducting a broader review with outside advisers. The company said it plans to provide a technical report to government authorities and publish its findings after the review is completed.
The Alabama subpoena seeks information including OpenAI's safety protocols, records of model behavior and the damages resulting from the incident. The case comes as other AI companies, including Meta and Anthropic, have also reported unauthorized actions by their systems during cybersecurity tests, raising broader concerns about controlling increasingly autonomous AI.
