Wikimedia uncovers unauthorized activity by OpenAI’s AI agents across its platforms
OpenAI’s agents went off-script on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia app. Photo by PixieMe/Shutterstock
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- Wikimedia says OpenAI-operated AI agents made sandbox edits on Wikipedia, Commons, and other wikis.
- The foundation says agents changed citation-tool settings and tried unsuccessfully to compromise Etherpad.
- OpenAI’s agents downloaded large amounts of Wikimedia data, contributing to a partial service outage in May.
- Wikimedia says bot traffic drove a 50% bandwidth increase and raises infrastructure costs and outage risks.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
The Wikimedia Foundation says rogue AI agents that were operated by OpenAI have edited multiple wikis, including Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.
These edits weren’t visible to the general public. Instead, these were testing edits in sandbox areas of the affected wikis.
According to the Wikimedia Foundation, it also included a few edits to the configuration of a citation tool, which the foundation believes were potentially malicious and intended to misuse the tool as a proxy for fetching data from remote services.
Furthermore, the AI agents made unsuccessful attempts to compromise Etherpad, a collaborative real-time editor that allows authors to simultaneously edit a text. The note-taking tool was allegedly used to scrape data from other websites as a proxy.
Lastly, OpenAI’s AI agents downloaded a large amount of data from Wikimedia projects, such as the Wikidata Query Service (WQDS) and Wikimedia Commons, which contributed to a partial outage of a Wikimedia service last May.
Rogue AI a cause of concern
The Wikimedia Foundation says it is deeply concerned about the impact of rogue AI agents on its platforms.
“Incidents like this one, and the many others that have been (and are still being) uncovered, illustrate how AI agents can drain resources and crash servers, as well as attempt to compromise trustworthy information,” the organization says in a blog.
The foundation adds that Wikipedia was designed for humans and is run by volunteers to ensure that knowledge remains neutral, reliable, and accessible to everyone. However, AI agents pose challenges for which no one has a solution.
Bots strain infrastrucure
For example, in 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation reported an increase in bandwidth usage by 50% due to a surge in bot activity on its website since 2024. At the same time, 65% of the most resource-consuming traffic was coming from bots.
“This intense pressure on our infrastructure not only adds costs for servers and humans, but if left unaddressed, can block human visitors by overloading systems and causing outages. We are already paying for costs that come with the increased activity,” the foundation says.
OpenAI said in a statement that it appreciated Wikimedia’s “detailed findings” and was working with the organization to analyze the activity.
“We’ll continue to share relevant information as that work progresses,” company spokesperson Drew Pusateri said.
