alt Hacker NewsOpenAI bots meddled with multiple US Government agency sites
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"When attempting to get information from the Census Bureau, for instance, AI agents used tools reserved for software developers to access it, the company said. "
> When attempting to get information from the Census Bureau, for instance, AI agents used tools reserved for software developers to access it, the company said.
> OpenAI said all of the government data accessed by bots was public.
I really wish we could just see what was reported, instead of having to guess from these journalist interpretations that have gone through rounds of optimization for sensationalism. The headline says “meddled” but the body says they accessed public information, but used tools intended for developers?
Does this mean they skipped the web interface and scraped a public API directly? Where is the meddling?
The other part about ChatGPT agents uploading 53 use images to other websites actually seems like a bigger deal.
This seems like more co-ordinated propaganda to try to help OpenAI and Anthropic create a cartel and win their anti-trust waiver.
The key sentence beneath the headline: "OpenAI said all of the government data accessed by bots was public."
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/09/26/open-ai-gove...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/technology/openais-ai-us-...
Either there are humans directing this, in which case they needed to be held accountable, or OpenAI has lost control of their operation, in which case they are not able to ensure the safety of their products and need to be shut down.
So it accessed public information using APIs and then republished that information online.
I do this. Am I an uncontrollable bot?
This article seems mostly clickbait. AFAICT “meddled with government sites” refers to accessing public APIs?
Occasionally this kind of thing has in the past resulted in CFAA cases when humans directly accessed such data, if the government intended it to stay private - round here we usually get outraged at this, if it’s a public API you should expect someone is going to read it.
China actually has more regulations on AI than the U.S. does right now. Some argue that American corporations regulate themselves to a higher standard of their own volition, but then this sort of thing keeps happening.
The Hugging Face incident worked out amicably because the people at Hugging Face decided they'd be cool with receiving a lot of money. $12.9B from Nvidia hit the spot apparently. U.S. AI corporations and their backers are huge, hugely in debt, and, for whatever reason, still allowed to borrow more. The U.S. government may be too scared to complain and risk killing the golden goose that is currently propping up their economy, but these companies can't buy out multiple world governments to keep OpenAI from running face-first into consequences.
This has to stop.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49851355
It is nice be a company who can just hack into things and not suffer any consequences.
If I was caught trying to exploit a government site I'd be in trouble. Why no one is knocking the doors of these companies?
We can blame open ai but we should also argue that government website should be secure...
French people data has been leaker like 4 times and every time its like "eh too bad"
I would be very interested to see the prompt and guardrails that were removed
Hell terrorists should start with some llms training if thats such a fine excuse.
If such attacks would come from a poor country they would be bombed into oblivion next day or at least cia would work hard on a coup since early morning.
If you want to sell the story to the government how dangerous these machines are, you had better terrorize the government too.
The word “meddled” here is a tell that nothing actually serious or inappropriate happened. At most, I bet they bypassed a captcha. But everyone is hyped up on AI fear right now, so the BBC is deliberately making the headline sound as scary as possible, and keeping the article vague. There’s not a single clear example of what “meddled” means in the article.
But worse, HN users, who should know better, are posting here in outrage. I’m guessing they didn’t even read the article.
They're doing this on purpose to make a case for regulation in their favor. No way they are this stupid.
"Marketing"
How much longer until they launch all the nuclear missiles?
Getting bored of these framings where the superintelligent sentient beings running freely inside OpenAI are doing things that the company has no control over. The headline should be:
OpenAI meddled with multiple US Government agency sites.
The bots are acting neither properly nor improperly, they’re acting as they’re being allowed or coordinated to act.