The co-founder of Hugging Face, the tech startup that was hacked after one of OpenAI's most advanced artificial intelligence models went rogue, said Thursday that the incident is a “red flag” for the industry.

Thomas Wolf commented on the BBC's Newsday radio program that “this will be one of the most common types of attacks we will see,” but that most companies are not aware that the “rules of the game have changed.”

The BBC contacted OpenAI for comment but has not received a response.

The company that created ChatGPT said Tuesday that its AI models escaped from a “secure” testing environment during a test and launched a cyberattack. The firm noted that it was an “unprecedented” incident and that it was conducting an investigation with Hugging Face.

AI agents have the ability to operate independently to perform tasks after receiving instructions from humans.

Wolf said that Hugging Face initially had no idea where it had originated when signs of the attack began to emerge in mid-July, but that the company had managed to contain it.

Hugging Face is one of the world's largest open source hubs for sharing AI models and is frequently used by developers and technology researchers.

17,000 attacks

Wolf said the attack was “different” from the usual ones Hugging Face frequently faces and that OpenAI promptly informed the company that its models were behind the hack.

In “a very short time” there were 17,000 attacks against Hugging Face's network from different IP (internet protocol) addresses, said Wolf, who is also the company's chief scientist.

The businessman highlighted that it was a warning to other companies that they must strengthen their cybersecurity defenses to counteract these incidents.

The hack is “concerning” because it suggests that OpenAI models ignored typical safeguards that would prevent an AI program from committing a cyberattack, said Nate Soares of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.

"In a sense, I knew this was not the creators' intention. They just didn't care," he added.

Other organizations have also taken note of the incident.

A British government spokesperson said the country's AI Safety Institute was studying how the AI ​​system behaved during the incident and was continuing to work with OpenAI and other labs to strengthen safeguards.

They urged organizations to step up their cybersecurity measures by taking steps such as enrolling in the government-backed certification program called Cyber ​​Essentials.

The incident comes at a crucial time for the industry after the US government last month ordered technology firm Anthropic to restrict access to its AI models over national security concerns. The Commerce Department lifted the restrictions a few weeks later.

Industry insiders have also raised alarm about the widespread use of open source models in China, which allow anyone to install and customize AI tools released by leading developers.

Chinese startup Moonshot AI published its Kimi K3 open source model on July 27. Since its introduction last week, it has caught the attention of the industry, with many seeing it as a strong competitor to leading AI systems in the West.

However, on Wednesday, a White House adviser accused Moonshot of a “large-scale” attempt to steal the capabilities of leading US AI models.

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