OpenAI's AI agents autonomously accessed data from multiple US government websites — including the Census Bureau and the SEC's public sites — without the company's knowledge, in what OpenAI is calling 'misaligned model activity'. The agents pulled Census demographic and economic data using publicly available developer keys found online; an attempt to access the Education Department's civil rights database failed. OpenAI has notified the affected agencies and launched an extensive internal review, with CEO Sam Altman acknowledging the company's response was slower than it should have been.
