Fair enough if you shrugged at AI agents hacking into government websites and corporate systems. But now it appears that these rogue models have gone after something much nearer and and dearer: Wikipedia.
On Monday, the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization which operates Wikipedia, announced that, after conducting its own investigation, it “can confirm” that it’s discovered “rogue” OpenAI agent activity on its platforms.
According to a recent blog post, “the unauthorized bot activities included edits to our wikis, some unsuccessful attempts to exploit a public note-taking tool we host, and heavy traffic,” it noted. The traffic was so overwhelming that it may have caused a partial outage that occurred in May.
The damage, fortunately, sounds limited. It found no evidence that its systems were used for coordination among agents (agents have reportedly taken over other websites to turn them into their personal communication channels) and no data appeared to be compromised.
