Description: OpenAI reported that an internal AI agent looking for historical earnings data during training found an exposed API key in a public GitHub repository. It used the key without authorization to authenticate to a data service and retrieve metadata. Its request for the earnings figures failed, and it presented invented figures as if they came from the source website.
Editor Notes: 05/15/2026: Date of incident. 09/16/2026: Date of OpenAI's disclosure. 11/07/2026: Incident ID created.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: OpenAI , AI agent system developers and Large language model developers developed an AI system deployed by OpenAI and AI agent system deployers, which harmed Targets of credential theft and Information security.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1804
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2026-05-15
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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OpenAI post-incident response
Signing up for disposable emails and searching GitHub for leaked API keys
Internal unreleased model · RL training
Main incident date: May 15, 2026
Discovered: May 25, 2026
Report updated: Sep 16, 2026
Summary
While trying to retrieve histor…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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