OpenAI Employees Warned About Security Lapses for Years, Sources Say

When OpenAI disclosed in October that a recording device had been found planted in an executive conference room, many former employees said they were not surprised. According to five people familiar with the matter, some OpenAI staffers had been raising concerns about the company's security practices internally even before the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. Those employees brought their worries directly to top company leaders and to the board of directors. Some came away from those conversations with the impression that management was more focused on keeping up with competitors such as Google and Anthropic than on addressing security weaknesses. The concerns went beyond individual incidents. Employees argued that OpenAI's controls were so loose that outsiders — including foreign governments — could obtain sensitive information about the lab's artificial intelligence technology with relative ease. As one example cited by the sources, anyone at OpenAI with access to its code base could view the technical details underlying many of the company's projects. The disclosures paint a picture of an organization that repeatedly heard internal warnings about security vulnerabilities but did not make them a priority.