The ChatGPT maker has been conducting a broad review of the activities of its AI models ⁠after the hacking incidents involving Hugging Face, RubyGems, and an Australian government portal, along with reported user data leaks.

Stating that it is searching through roughly 50 petabytes of data as it works to understand the full scope of its rogue agent activity, OpenAI said, “In some cases, models used internet access in unintended ways or, in retrospect, did not have the ideal restrictions applied. Over the last several months, we have ⁠been applying new technical and operational measures to avoid similar problems or catch them very early and will continue this work.”

OpenAI previously said the review would take months to complete given the scale of the work.

OpenAI’s revelation also comes amid the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) conducting an industry-wide probe into the frontier AI lab, along with industry peers like Anthropic, to uncover the potential dangers their technology poses to consumers.

The probe is the first official US enforcement action into rogue AI agents, following a surge in incidents in the past three months that have stoked fears among the public about the potential of uncontrolled AI harming humans.

As per Reuters, the FTC plans to issue formal demands for ⁠information and compel testimony from executives at top AI developers, including Anthropic, OpenAI and the research group METR.

It is worth mentioning that Anthropic and OpenAI have used METR to conduct independent investigations into security incidents involving their agentic AI technology.

The FTC possesses the broad mandate to sue companies over unfair or deceptive ⁠practices, including failures to protect consumers’ data.

OpenAI has already apologised for the hacking of an Australian government website by its rogue AI agent, apart from committing funding to improve cyber defences and to establish a local response taskforce.

In a blog post titled “How ‌we will do better for Australia”, the ChatGPT maker acknowledged it mishandled its response and pledged to take accountability to “rebuild trust with the Australian people”.

The incursion, which took place in June, was only made public last week, marking the Frontier AI lab as the first tech venture to have an AI agent hack a government website.

The incident drew public condemnation and a rebuke from Prime Minister Anthony ⁠Albanese, who called it “unacceptable” and criticised the company’s delay in notifying the government.

“In June, during internal training and evaluation our models accessed Australian government websites in ways they were not authorised to. We also should have handled our response better. We are sorry and working to do better in the future,” OpenAI said in the blog post.

OpenAI said an experimental AI model breached the Australia Medicare Statistics Reporting Service, a data portal for the country’s universal healthcare system, during an internal training activity.

“An OpenAI model discovered a way to gain non-public access to the service and ran commands, retrieved internal files, credentials and ‌aggregate statistics, ⁠and wrote files,” the ChatGPT parent noted.

However, its review to date had not found any evidence of medical records being accessed from the portal.

“AI agent activity affecting three other Australian government agency websites also did not result in access to sensitive records,” OpenAI said further.

“OpenAI would provide dedicated support for the affected ⁠agencies, finance the strengthening of cyber defences for government and industry through our USD 1 billion global fund and establish an Australian taskforce to develop recommendations drawing on lessons from these incidents,” the company remarked.

OpenAI’s Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon would appear at ⁠an Australian Senate committee hearing on AI in Sydney on October 6.

Separately, the ChatGPT parent has cancelled the release of its new AI model GPT-6.1 Astra after internal testing found the system did not meet the company’s safety standards.

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