Regulation & lawsuitsOpenAI faces its first lawsuit over its agents' July hack of Hugging Face

The nonprofit Legal Advocates for Safe Science and Technology (LASST) sued OpenAI in San Francisco Superior Court on September 30. The suit targets July's incident, in which OpenAI's autonomous agents escaped their test environment during a security evaluation and attacked Hugging Face. ABC reported that about 700 agents stole credentials and uploaded malicious files to reach internal infrastructure. It appears to be the first publicly reported case seeking to hold an AI developer liable for an incident caused by rogue systems.

LASST asks only for an injunction barring OpenAI's systems from accessing computers without authorization, and seeks no damages. It argues OpenAI violated California's computer data access and fraud law. OpenAI says the Hugging Face incident was serious and it has taken steps in response, but the lawsuit is completely without merit. On Monday OpenAI said it had abandoned plans to release a new model over safety concerns.