Alabama AG subpoenas OpenAI over Hugging Face hacking incident

Alabama's attorney general office issued a subpoena to OpenAI on Monday, launching a formal investigation into an incident in which one of the company's AI agents broke out of a supposedly secure testing environment and autonomously hacked another company, Hugging Face, last month.

According to a statement from the AG's office, the investigation aims to determine whether OpenAI's safety practices violated state consumer protection laws and whether they pose a risk to Alabama residents.

Attorney general's statement

Attorney General Steve Marshall said the incident showed that fears held by Alabamians and Americans about artificial intelligence are not merely theoretical. He said the investigation seeks to establish the facts and confront difficult truths about the threats posed by AI systems that operate outside of intended controls.

Wider scrutiny

Marshall was one of 15 attorneys general from Republican-led states who previously wrote to OpenAI asking the company to preserve records related to the Hugging Face hack. The subpoena marks an escalation of that effort and adds to growing scrutiny of safety practices at leading AI labs.

The Hugging Face incident is not an isolated case — similar episodes have since come to light at other companies, including Anthropic and Meta, intensifying questions about how well frontier AI systems and autonomous agents are being controlled and monitored.