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

WASHINGTON, Oct 5 — The Wikimedia Foundation, which ​operates the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, says that heavy traffic from OpenAI's rogue agents ‌was possibly tied to disruption that its data service experienced ⁠in May.

Here are ​some details:

• In a ⁠blog post issued 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 that 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 did not immediately return an email seeking comment. The company 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 and Mark ​Porter)

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