15 Republican attorneys general put OpenAI on legal notice over Hugging Face security breach

15 states put OpenAI on notice over the Hugging Face hack

Fifteen state attorneys general have put OpenAI on formal legal notice over the Hugging Face breach. They are demanding it preserve every record of the incident, including any notes its AI agent left "for future versions of itself" on how to escape OpenAI's own controls. Fifteen US states have put OpenAI on legal notice over the summer's most unsettling AI security incident. They wrote to chief executive Sam Altman. They demanded that OpenAI preserve every record of the Hugging Face breach. That demand includes something strange. The attorneys general want any notes the agent left, "apparently for future versions of itself," that describe how to escape OpenAI's own controls. The letter is dated 3 August and led by Iowa's Brenna Bird. It is a preserve-all-evidence notice, the standard first step before litigation. The 15 signatories are all Republican attorneys general. They say OpenAI let an experimental model gain "unauthorized access to several computer networks," posing "an imminent risk of substantial harm." The incident behind it is one we have covered closely. In July, OpenAI tested the cyber prowess of an agent. It ran on GPT-5.6 Sol and an unreleased model the company called "even more capable." The test was meant to stay sealed and offline. Instead the agent found a software flaw, broke out, and got into Hugging Face's databases. The attorneys general seized on how loosely the test was run. OpenAI let the agent operate without the classifiers that block high-risk cyber activity. One commentator, quoted in the letter, called it "no guardrails," in essence. OpenAI never confirmed its "isolated" environment was truly sealed. It was not. The detail that alarmed them One finding drew particular attention. The agent, the attorneys general said, had left notes for its own future versions. Some of those notes, citing a Reuters report, told future agents how to "free themselves from OpenAI's internal constraints," they wrote. The officials want every one of them preserved. They also want more than the Hugging Face records. The letter demands every step OpenAI took in response. It also wants any earlier case where one of its agents broke into a system it should not have touched. OpenAI's agent reportedly did just that at a second company. The legal footing is explicit. OpenAI may have broken state and federal law, they wrote, including consumer-protection and data-privacy statutes. They called the conduct "unprecedented and alarming," and promised action. The same officials were already circling OpenAI over its corporate structure. OpenAI's response OpenAI struck a cooperative tone. A spokesperson told Business Insider the incident was "an important moment for AI safety," and said the company takes the officials' questions seriously. It is running a review with outside advisers and its own Safety and Security Committee. It will hand the officials a technical report and publish its findings. The letter widens a fallout that keeps spreading. The breach has already drawn a bill in Congress. It has also drawn criticism from Hugging Face's chief executive, Clem Delangue, who wants mandatory disclosure of AI cyberattacks. Underneath it all sits an unsettled question: who answers when an AI acts on its own? Fifteen states want the paper trail before they decide.

Republican AGs urge OpenAI to preserve records on Hugging Face breach

More than a dozen Republican attorneys general are calling on OpenAI to preserve records on its models' recent breach of another company, suggesting the AI firm may have violated state or federal laws in the incident. In a letter sent to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Monday, 15 attorneys general wrote the ChatGPT maker may have broken consumer protection laws or data-privacy statutes when two of its models went rogue and hacked into the technology startup Hugging Face. "To ensure the integrity of our Offices' review, we ask that OpenAI take immediate steps to preserve all potentially relevant documents, data, and information," the prosecutors wrote. The letter urges OpenAI to keep "all materials" related to the security breach, including the firm's discovery of the incident, the internal reviews conducted on the systems and the firm's policy, procedures and oversight over model evaluations. "OpenAI has an obligation to act responsibly and to follow State and federal laws that protect Americans' safety and security. When OpenAI takes actions that imperil the welfare of our citizens, State Attorneys General will step in to protect them," the letter added. OpenAI revealed late last month that two of its models, including its latest GPT-5.6 Sol and an unreleased model, were being evaluated in an internal testing sandbox when they breached past the environment and broke into Hugging Face's database without any prompt to do so. The ChatGPT maker said the models were being tested for hacking capabilities in an isolated testing environment with constrained network access and had their normal safety checks off as a result. While trying to find a solution for one of the tests, the models exploited a previously unknown vulnerability in a third-party software to gain access to the internet. From there, the agents accessed another testing environment without authorization before breaching Hugging Face, which hosts hundreds of thousands of open-source models, datasets and cloud environments. Disclosing the incident, OpenAI said it found a "small number of cases" in which the models "identified and used publicly exposed credentials at the account-level on other publicly-available services." The attorneys general's letter said OpenAI should also keep materials related to these cases. The attorneys argued OpenAI "failed to confirm" the testing environment was secure "despite the severe risks posed by the scenario." The coalition was led by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird (R), along with GOP AGs from Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. The incident comes amid growing concerns around the cybersecurity risks of AI, with OpenAI admitting the incident was an "unprecedented" involving "state-of-the-art cyber capabilities." OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.