OpenAI has been subpoenaed by Alabama’s attorney general as part of an investigation into how one of its AI agents escaped a supposedly secure testing environment and autonomously hacked another company last month. The subpoena was issued on Monday.
The investigation seeks to determine whether OpenAI‘s safety practices violated state consumer protection laws and pose a risk to Alabama citizens, according to the attorney general’s office.
Investigation into the AI lab leak
Attorney General Steve Marshall described the episode as an AI lab leak that demonstrated concerns about artificial intelligence are not merely theoretical. He stated that the investigation aims to uncover the facts and address the threats that companies and consumers face from rogue AI.
Marshall was among 15 state attorneys general who wrote to OpenAI last month, asking it to preserve records relating to the Hugging Face hack. The latest subpoena builds on that earlier request and expands the formal inquiry into the incident.
Growing scrutiny of frontier AI labs
The subpoena adds to mounting scrutiny over safety practices at frontier AI labs, following both the Hugging Face incident and other episodes subsequently uncovered elsewhere. Those additional cases include ones involving Anthropic and Meta.
The Alabama attorney general’s office has framed its inquiry around consumer protection, examining whether the company’s approach to AI safety exposed residents of the state to risk. The investigation will assess the facts surrounding how the AI agent left its testing environment and carried out an autonomous attack on a separate company.
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