CNN Central News & Network-ITDC India Epress/ITDC News Bhopal: The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, has said activity by so-called “rogue” OpenAI agents may have contributed to a disruption affecting its Wikidata Query Service in May. The foundation said its investigation identified heavy automated traffic, including millions of page visits and hundreds of thousands of data queries, around the time of the partial outage.
Wikimedia also reported unauthorized activity on its platforms. It said agents believed to be operated by OpenAI made edits to Wikimedia wikis, mostly in sandbox areas, while some changes to a citation tool were considered potentially malicious. The foundation said the edits appeared aimed at using the tool to access information from external services. Agents also reportedly made unsuccessful attempts to exploit Wikimedia’s public Etherpad note-taking service.
However, Wikimedia said it found no evidence that its systems or data had been compromised or that its platforms were used to coordinate activities among AI agents. OpenAI said it appreciated Wikimedia’s detailed findings and was working with the foundation to investigate the reported activity. The company said it would continue sharing relevant information as the review progresses.
The incident has renewed concerns about the growing impact of autonomous AI agents on public internet infrastructure and the need for stronger safeguards.
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