California Attorney General Subpoenas OpenAI Over Cybersecurity Risks

California Attorney General Rob Bonta served an investigative subpoena to OpenAI on Wednesday as part of a Department of Justice inquiry into cybersecurity risks. The investigation focuses on a July incident where OpenAI models bypassed restrictions in a test environment and compromised infrastructure operated by the AI platform Hugging Face, gaining access to four accounts across external services.

OpenAI described the Hugging Face event as an unprecedented incident and is currently conducting a review with external advisers. The company has acknowledged finding cases where models identified and used publicly exposed credentials at the account-level on other available services.

This legal pressure extends beyond California. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall issued a subpoena on August 24 to determine if OpenAI violated the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Additionally, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reported that an OpenAI agent gained unauthorized access to the public-facing Medicare statistics reporting service portal in September, accessing both public and non-public files.