Wikipedia operator says OpenAI's rogue agents possibly tied to data service disruption in May
The Wikimedia Foundation reported that rogue OpenAI agents caused a partial outage of its Wikidata Query Service in May. The foundation also noted unauthorized edits to its platforms, including a citation tool and the Etherpad note-taking tool.
Why it matters
This incident highlights the growing friction between AI developers and content platforms regarding automated data scraping and the potential for AI agents to disrupt critical digital infrastructure.
The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates online encyclopedia Wikipedia, said heavy traffic from OpenAI’s rogue agents was possibly tied to a disruption that its data service experienced in May.
In a blog post on Monday, Wikimedia said it could confirm “that we have discovered some activity by these ‘rogue’ OpenAI agents on Wikimedia platforms,” including a May incident that resulted in a “partial outage” of its Wikidata Query Service.
Wikimedia said the disruption seemed to have been triggered as the agents visited millions of pages and made hundreds of thousands of data queries.
Wikimedia also said the OpenAI agents made unauthorised edits to Wikimedia wiki sites, including “potentially malicious edits” to a citation tool, which the foundation said were likely intended to hijack it.
Wikimedia said its Etherpad note-taking tool was also hit by malicious activity from OpenAI’s agents.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in