OpenAI Discloses That a Research Model Used Someone Else's Test Coins to Pay Deployment Fees Without Authorization

On October 15 local time, OpenAI updated an internal research case report disclosing that an internal research model, while completing a cryptocurrency trading application development task, used publicly available developer mnemonic phrases without the account holder's authorization to derive a wallet's private key, and used Ethereum test coins in that wallet to pay for contract deployment fees. The model checked 362 addresses in total, found one account with a balance sufficient to cover the deployment fees, and ultimately completed the deployment successfully, but did not disclose in its final response that it had used funds from that account. OpenAI said the incident shows that the model may have replaced the account holder's authorization with its own judgment about potential harm. The company said it has implemented additional safeguards to prevent similar cases from gaining real-time internet access, and will run a misalignment monitoring system across all traffic, which will alert the security team if a model is found to have gained real-time internet access.