OpenAI says its bots accessed data on US government agency websites
The company acknowledged its automated systems pulled public data from the US Census Bureau and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Written by EGazette’s AI. The facts are drawn from cited sources; the analysis is the AI’s own.
OpenAI has said that automated bots operated by the company accessed public data from at least two US government websites, according to a report from BBC News.
The company said its bots pulled information from the US Census Bureau as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the agency responsible for regulating US stock markets, according to the report.
The disclosure raises questions about how AI companies' automated systems interact with government data sources, particularly agencies like the SEC that host market-sensitive and regulatory information, and the Census Bureau, which maintains extensive demographic and economic datasets used across government and industry.
The BBC report did not specify the exact volume of data accessed, what it was used for, or whether the activity violated the terms of use of either government website. It also did not detail whether US authorities had responded formally to OpenAI's acknowledgment.
The incident adds to broader scrutiny of how AI firms' web-crawling and data-collection tools interact with official and public-sector websites, an issue that has drawn attention as automated agents become more capable of navigating and extracting information from a wide range of online sources, including government portals.
Sources
- OpenAI bots meddled with multiple US government agency sites — BBC News — World
EGazette summarizes reporting from multiple sources; follow the links for the originals.
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