OpenAI is in an unwelcome highlight this week after a big safety flaw in its ChatGPT was found this week, and a beforehand undisclosed assault has come to gentle.
The particular safety flaw was first uncovered on July 2, when engineer Pedro José Pereira Vieito identified on Twitter/X that the Mac model of ChatGPT was storing the conversations of customers in plain textual content, slightly than decrypting them, which means hackers might learn them with no effort. The app can solely be straight downloaded from OpenAI’s web site, which means it doesn’t should undergo Apple’s safety protocols, which might have prevented this.
The corporate has since patched the app, encrypting the conversations.
In the meantime, on Thursday, the New York Occasions reported the corporate was the sufferer of a hacker assault, the place the offenders have been in a position to entry inner messaging techniques in OpenAI, permitting them to acquire particulars in regards to the firm’s applied sciences. OpenAI has not beforehand reported this breach publicly, however did let staff know in April of 2023.
The hacker was not considered related to a international authorities and the corporate didn’t alert the FBI or different regulation enforcement officers.
That breach led Leopold Aschenbrenner, an OpenAI technical program supervisor, to ship a memo to the board of administrators, expressing issues the corporate was not doing sufficient to stop international governmental adversaries from stealing its secrets and techniques. This spring, Aschenbrenner was fired from OpenAI.
The corporate informed the Occasions the dismissal was not related with that memo, however in accordance with The Data, he was fired for allegedly leaking info to journalists.
The revelation of the safety gaps come as OpenAI’s dominance on the earth of AI continues to develop. The corporate is closely backed by Microsoft and has signed a rising variety of offers with media firms to include their content material into its Massive Language Fashions.
