OpenAI has fired three researchers for allegedly mishandling information, including work that involved an external organisation that analyses artificial intelligence (AI) models.
“Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work,” a spokesperson told the BBC.
The ChatGPT-maker did not name the sacked workers, but at least two of them were involved in safety research at the firm.
The firings come as the debate over AI safety and the risks the technology may pose to humanity has intensified in recent weeks.
“We have parted ways with three individuals for violating our policies on accessing and handling sensitive company information,” OpenAI’s spokesperson said.
The BBC understands the former employees were not let go for raising safety concerns but for allegedly mishandling sensitive information.
Concerns over AI safety have made headlines after some researchers and industry executives called for more guardrails around the technology.
OpenAI has come under under intense scrutiny after its models went rogue and hacked several platforms, including Australian government websites.
In an earlier incident an OpenAI system accessed the internet and breached the open-source developer platform Hugging Face.
That incident led OpenAI to conduct a broad review of the activities of its AI models – called agents, which are designed to execute tasks autonomously based on simple instructions.
The AI lab said this week that it has notified more than 100 organisations about incidents involving unauthoritised activity linked to its AI systems.
Being notified “does not mean that any private information was accessed” or that a system was compromised, OpenAI said.
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Hacker group ShinyHunters claims to have detailed data on thousands of FBI employees.
Published On 23 Sep 202623 Sep 2026
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation says it is investigating a breach of its jobs website by a hacking group that claims to have obtained sensitive data on thousands of employees.
“The FBI is aware of a cybercriminal enterprise group claiming a compromise of the fbijobs.gov portal and alleged impact to FBI employee personally identifiable information,” the agency said in a statement on Wednesday.
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“While the point of breach is still undetermined — whether a third -party or the FBI’s enterprise — we are actively and aggressively investigating this matter and working closely with those third-party providers that support fbijobs.gov to mitigate any and all risk.”
Several news outlets, including Reuters news agency, reported they had seen parts of the data, claimed to be part of a larger trove between two and three terabytes by ShinyHunters, a hacking group claiming responsibility for the breach. According to Reuters, the data includes granular detail about scores of bureau officials’s job assignments, including sensitive work against Chinese spies, Russian intelligence, drug cartels and more.
ShinyHunters said on Tuesday that it had breached the FBI and stolen data on a huge number of current and former FBI employees. It said it is holding the data hostage until the bureau rescinds an unflattering statement about the group issued in May. On Wednesday, the group said it was trying to keep the personnel information from circulating widely in the meantime.
An FBI statement in May characterised ShinyHunters as “threat actors” who often harass or threaten victims, using “their real or exaggerated claims of access to sensitive or personal information to prompt payment from victims”.
The group “may falsely claim to have sensitive or compromising information, including embarrassing photographs or videos of victims, which frequently do not exist,” the FBI said.
The FBI has been a common hacking target.
In March, the FBI disclosed that it was investigating “suspicious activities” on an internal system that contains sensitive information related to surveillance operations and investigations. Also that month, a pro-Iranian hacking group claimed to have hacked an account of FBI Director Kash Patel and posted online what appear to be years-old photographs of him, along with a work resume and other personal documents dating back more than a decade.
The jobs portal was still offline Wednesday afternoon.