Rogue OpenAI model hacker gives industry wake-up call

Monday, 27 July 2026 06:54 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Co-Founder of Hugging Face, a technology startup that was hacked after some of OpenAI’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models went rogue, last week said that the incident is “a wake-up call” for the industry.

Thomas Wolf told BBC’s Newsday radio program that “this will be one of the most common types of cyber attacks we see,” but that most firms are not aware that the “game has changed.”

The BBC has contacted OpenAI for comment.

The ChatGPT-maker said that its AI models broke out of a secure test environment during a trial and launched a cyber attack. The firm said the incident was “unprecedented” and that it was conducting an investigation with Hugging Face.

AI agents are able to operate alone to accomplish tasks after human instruction.

Wolf said that Hugging Face initially had no idea where the attack originated when signs of it surfaced in mid-July but that the company was able to contain the breach.

Hugging Face is one of the world’s largest open-source hubs for sharing AI models and is often used by tech developers and researchers

Wolf said the breach was “very different” from the usual cyber attacks that Hugging Face often faces and that OpenAI quickly informed the company that its models were behind the hack.