OpenAI was reportedly hacked last year, sparking security fears at the artificial intelligence company.
The hacker accessed the company’s internal email system and stole details about its artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the New York Times reported Thursday (July 4), citing two sources familiar with the incident.
These sources say the hacker saw discussions on an online forum where employees were discussing OpenAI’s latest technologies, but did not hack the system on which the company maintains and builds its AI. PYMNTS has reached out to OpenAI for comment but has not yet heard back.
According to the report, OpenAI executives disclosed the incident at a company meeting last spring but declined to make the hack public because no partner or customer information was stolen.
And while company officials didn’t believe the hacker had ties to foreign governments — and thus didn’t alert law enforcement — the sources said some employees worried the hack meant foreign adversaries like China could steal OpenAI’s technology.
Following the breach, Leopold Aschenbrenner, OpenAI’s technical program manager, wrote to the company’s board and said OpenAI was not doing enough to prevent foreign adversaries from stealing its secrets.
Aschenbrenner now claims OpenAI fired him this spring for leaking other information outside the company and has argued that his firing was politically motivated, the report adds.
“We appreciate the concerns Leopold raised while he was at OpenAI, and it did not lead to his separation,” OpenAI spokeswoman Liz Bourgeois told the NYT.
The news comes 10 days after reports that OpenAI was taking additional steps to block China from accessing its AI software.
According to a Bloomberg report, the company has reportedly sent memos to developers in China about its plans to block their access to its tools and software starting this month. In response, Chinese companies have begun asking developers to switch to their own products.
“We are taking additional steps to block API traffic from regions where we do not support access to OpenAI services,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement.
The news comes amid what PYMNTS has dubbed “the year of the cyberattack,” as businesses across the country face serious breaches.
“This increased focus on cybersecurity coincides with a broader debate around data security in the connected economy, particularly in connected workplaces and smart homes, where the growing use of connected devices is exposing new vulnerabilities given the vast amounts of personal data they collect,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this week.
