Wikimedia Identifies OpenAI Agents and Massive Scraping

The Wikimedia Foundation claims to have discovered activities by AI agents operated by OpenAI on its projects. The identified actions include modifications to sandboxes, testing on a note-taking tool, and a very high volume of queries directed at the Wikidata Query Service. The first signals date back to May 11 and 12, and a swarm of agents is mentioned.

Massive Queries and Tests Dated May 11 and 12

The Wikimedia Foundation observed widespread crawling, with hundreds of thousands of queries sent to the Wikidata Query Service. Concurrently, modifications were detected on sandbox pages. The earliest traces of these testing activities are dated: on Wikipedia, they appear to have started on May 12, while on the UseModWiki Sandbox page, the first modifications related to the incident date back to May 11.

Unauthorized Bots and Attempts to Use Etherpad

The detected activities include unsuccessful attempts to use a public note-taking tool hosted by the foundation, as well as trials of using infrastructures like Etherpad to transfer content from other sources. Unauthorized bots also modified wikis. The foundation indicates that it has confirmed the presence of activities by agents described as "renegades" operated by OpenAI on its platforms.

An Investigation Targeting OpenAI and the Swarm Hypothesis

The Wikimedia Foundation has conducted investigations to determine whether its platforms have been impacted by AI agents, focusing on those used by OpenAI. A notable volume of traffic was observed among the identified activities. According to the foundation, most of these interventions would originate from a group of agents comparable, if not identical, to the one that had previously vandalized a German wiki during a training phase for research tasks.