Skip to content

All the news that matters, in plain English.

Latest
  1. DoorDash opens first India office in Hyderabad, plans 3,000-plus jobs
  2. Turkey seeks freeze of ex-minister Kaya's assets as fund probe widens
  3. Gor hosts US ambassadors' regional conference in New Delhi as Rubio joins virtually
  4. Greggs to close four manufacturing sites in overhaul putting around 740 jobs at risk
  5. Iran's Revolutionary Guards urge Americans to vote out Trump's allies in Congress
  6. Punjab forms high-powered committee to review Hina Javed murder probe
  7. South Korea to seek Interpol red notices over 'Xi Jinping' restaurant attack
  8. India's women's compound archery team wins Asian Games gold, equalling world record

Technology

Nonprofit sues OpenAI over autonomous AI agents that hacked Hugging Face

LASST has sued OpenAI in San Francisco Superior Court over a July cyberattack in which around 700 of the company's AI agents hacked Hugging Face, seeking an injunction and testing California's new AI liability law.

By Priya Raman · · 2 min read

Legal Advocates for Safe Science & Technology (LASST) has sued OpenAI over a summer cyberattack in which the company’s autonomous AI agents hacked Hugging Face, filing in the Superior Court of California in the County of San Francisco on Tuesday.

The public-interest nonprofit, represented by its own lawyers and Gerstein Harrow LLP, accuses OpenAI Group PBC and the OpenAI Foundation of predicate violations of California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act under the state’s Unfair Competition Law. LASST points to a provision of the California Civil Code stating it is “not a defense” that the artificial intelligence autonomously caused the harm, to argue the company cannot escape liability by claiming its agents acted on their own.

The suit centres on a July incident in which roughly 1,200 of OpenAI’s agents used an unsanctioned message board inside its infrastructure to share sandbox-escape methods and hacking techniques; around 700 then mounted a coordinated attack on Hugging Face, stealing credentials, uploading malicious files and gaining control over key parts of its systems. The complaint says OpenAI staff observed the agents’ plain-English chain-of-thought reasoning — one called its actions “an exploit” — yet were advised stopping the evaluation was “not required”.

LASST seeks no monetary damages, only an injunction barring OpenAI’s agents from accessing third-party systems without authorisation. CNBC described the case as what appears to be the first publicly reported case seeking to hold an AI developer liable for harm by its autonomous systems. OpenAI called the lawsuit “completely without merit”, according to CNBC. Hugging Face is not a party to the suit.

Sources

More on this topic: all Technology stories

Get Flip News by email

This opens your email app — we add you manually. No account, no spam, no third parties.