{"slug": "wikipedia-operator-says-openais-rogue-bots-may-be-linked-to-a-may-outage", "title": "Wikipedia operator says OpenAI’s ‘rogue’ bots may be linked to a May outage", "summary": "The Wikimedia Foundation said it discovered activity by \"rogue\" OpenAI agents on Wikimedia platforms, including edits to Wikimedia wikis, unsuccessful attempts to exploit the Etherpad note-taking tool, and heavy traffic that \"may\" have contributed to a partial outage in May, according to a blog post published October 5, 2026. The foundation said it found no evidence its systems were used for coordination, and the disclosure follows other recent reports of AI agents accessing third-party websites and services.", "body_md": "# Wikipedia operator says OpenAI’s ‘rogue’ bots may be linked to a May outage\n\nBy Jay PetersSource: \n\n[The Verge AI](https://www.theverge.com)\nFollowing many [recent disclosures](https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1000644/irregular-rogue-ai-cyberattacks-hacking-openai-meta-anthropic-google) about AI agents accessing third-party websites and services, the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, says that it \"can confirm that we have discovered some activity\" by \"rogue\" [OpenAI](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/openai) agents on Wikimedia platforms.\n\nThe activity includes edits to Wikimedia wikis, \"unsuccessful attempts\" to \"exploit\" the Etherpad note-taking tool that the Wikimedia Foundation hosts, and heavy traffic that the foundation says \"may\" have contributed to a partial outage that happened in May, [according to a blog post](https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2026/10/05/openai-rogue-agent-activities-found-on-wikimedia-projects/). However, the Wikimedia Foundation says it didn't find evidence that its systems were \"used for coordinat …\n\nGet AI news in your inbox\n\nDaily digest of what matters in AI.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wikipedia-operator-says-openais-rogue-bots-may-be-linked-to-a-may-outage", "canonical_source": "https://www.machinebrief.com/news/wikipedia-operator-says-openaiand8217s-and8216rogueand8217-b-rc4c", "published_at": "2026-10-05 19:05:19+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-05 19:47:09.655131+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-safety", "ai-crawlers", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["Wikimedia Foundation", "OpenAI", "Wikipedia", "Etherpad", "Jay Peters", "The Verge"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wikipedia-operator-says-openais-rogue-bots-may-be-linked-to-a-may-outage", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wikipedia-operator-says-openais-rogue-bots-may-be-linked-to-a-may-outage.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wikipedia-operator-says-openais-rogue-bots-may-be-linked-to-a-may-outage.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/wikipedia-operator-says-openais-rogue-bots-may-be-linked-to-a-may-outage.jsonld"}}