{"slug": "tech-boss-whose-company-was-hacked-by-rogue-openai-bot-warns-game-has-changed", "title": "Tech boss whose company was hacked by rogue OpenAI bot warns ‘game has changed’", "summary": "Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf warned that AI-driven cyberattacks will become 'one of the most common types of cyber attacks we see' after OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol and another pre-release model escaped a test environment and hacked his company's network with 17,000 attacks in mid-July. OpenAI acknowledged the incident as 'an unprecedented cyber incident' and said it is responding accordingly, while Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue called for an open, collaborative approach to AI safety.", "body_md": "A tech boss has warned his industry faces a ‘wake-up call’ after his firm was hacked by AI models that escaped from a test environment and went rogue.\n\nStart-up Hugging Face was on the receiving end of the bizarre incident last week, which involved some of the most sophisticated software from [ChatGPT](https://metro.co.uk/tag/chatgpt/) creators OpenAI.\n\nCompany co-founder Thomas Wolf told the BBC’s Newsday programme that its network was hit by 17,000 attacks in a ‘very short time’ in mid-July.\n\nOpenAI, which is run by Sam Altman, quickly reached out to tell them its models were responsible for the hack, Wolf added, after they broke free while being tested on their capabilities.\n\nIn a statement released on Sunday, the AI giant said the models in question were GPT-5.6 Sol and another ‘even more capable pre-release model’.\n\nIt continued: ‘We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities, and are responding accordingly.\n\n‘We are sharing preliminary findings at this stage to help defenders understand what happened and to help calibrate on what models are now capable of.’\n\nHugging Face CEO Clem Delangue, who co-founded the business with Wolf and Julien Chaumond, agreed that the incident was ‘possibly the first of its kind’ and called for an open, collaborative approach to AI safety.\n\nHe wrote in a post on X: ‘It’s quite mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously!’\n\nSpeaking to the BBC, Wolf warned it will become ‘one of the most common types of cyber attacks we see’.\n\nHe urged other companies to strengthen their cybersecurity to fend off and contain such breaches – as Hugging Face was ultimately able to do.\n\nHugging Face is a developer platform which calls itself the ‘AI community building the future’.\n\n**Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.**\n\n**For more stories like this, **[ check our news page](https://metro.co.uk/news/).\n\nMORE: [Music platform hit with 90,000 AI-generated tracks every day – can you spot them?](https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/23/music-streaming-platform-hit-90-000-ai-generated-tracks-every-day-29197715/?ico=more_text_links)\n\nMORE: [The clever new tech that could make AI look stupid](https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/18/quantum-computing-thing-thatll-even-bigger-smarter-ai-28540469/?ico=more_text_links)\n\nMORE: [Tesco is the latest supermarket testing human-sized robots — and shoppers think they’re ‘creepy’](https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/15/tesco-latest-supermarket-trialling-human-sized-robots-shoppers-think-creepy-29143336/?ico=more_text_links)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tech-boss-whose-company-was-hacked-by-rogue-openai-bot-warns-game-has-changed", "canonical_source": "https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/23/tech-boss-whose-company-hacked-rogue-openai-bot-warns-game-changed-29204743/", "published_at": "2026-07-23 08:36:47+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-23 08:53:31.712674+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-safety", "ai-policy", "ai-research"], "entities": ["Hugging Face", "Thomas Wolf", "OpenAI", "Sam Altman", "GPT-5.6 Sol", "Clem Delangue", "Julien Chaumond", "BBC"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tech-boss-whose-company-was-hacked-by-rogue-openai-bot-warns-game-has-changed", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tech-boss-whose-company-was-hacked-by-rogue-openai-bot-warns-game-has-changed.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tech-boss-whose-company-was-hacked-by-rogue-openai-bot-warns-game-has-changed.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tech-boss-whose-company-was-hacked-by-rogue-openai-bot-warns-game-has-changed.jsonld"}}