OpenAI hacked, secret conversations exposed

Hackers have breached the systems of OpenAI, the company that developed the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, according to a report published by the New York Times.

The cyberattackers were able to view internal conversations and may have stolen details about the design of the company’s artificial intelligence products, according to the report, which indicated that the company did not notify law enforcement authorities about the breach.

The incident also saw one of the hackers pull details from discussions in an internal forum among OpenAI employees about the technologies the company is working on, but they did not access the systems where the company’s popular products are built and housed, according to the report.

OpenAI executives told employees and the company’s board of directors about the breach in April of last year, but they did not disclose the details because no customer or partner data was stolen.

The report said that the company also did not notify US law enforcement agencies about the incident because it believed the hacker was a private individual with no known ties to a foreign government.

For his part, Dr. Ilya Kolochenko, a cybersecurity expert and CEO of security firm ImmuniWeb, warned that attacks on AI companies are likely to continue and increase, given the growing importance of the technology.

He said: “Although the American company has not yet confirmed the details of the incident, there is a strong possibility that it has already happened... and it is not the only one.”

He continued: “The global race for artificial intelligence has become a matter of national security for many countries, and therefore state-backed cybercrime groups are aggressively targeting AI vendors, from talented startups to tech giants like Google or OpenAI.”

It is noteworthy that the American company found itself at the forefront of the recent boom in the field of artificial intelligence, which was sparked by the launch of the chatbot “ChatGPT” in late 2022.

Since then, many of the world’s largest technology companies have begun moving into this sector, with many experts also identifying generative AI as the key innovation of this generation.