OpenAI and Hugging Face partner to address security incident during model evaluation

Update on August 26, 2026: Read our findings from the Hugging Face incident⁠ and the steps we’re taking to strengthen security and model alignment.

Update on July 29, 2026:

• Since the early days of the incident response, we have been working with external advisors, including CrowdStrike, to validate our understanding of the actions the models took within our own network as well as those of Hugging Face and impact to other third parties. 

• We are also working with METR and Redwood Research to conduct a third-party assessment of the model behavior observed during the incident, which will inform our own technical report. As part of this work, METR and Redwood Research will publish a joint blog that will detail the terms of their engagement, the scope of their evaluation, and their findings.

Update on July 28, 2026:

Last week, Hugging Face disclosed a new kind of security incident⁠(opens in a new window) after they detected and contained an AI agent that compromised their infrastructure, something we expect to become more commonplace with the proliferation of increasingly cyber-capable models. After investigating, we now know that this particular incident was driven by a combination of OpenAI models — including GPT‑5.6 Sol and an even more capable pre-release model, all with reduced cyber refusals for evaluation purposes — while being internally tested on a benchmark⁠(opens in a new window) of cyber capabilities.

We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities, and are responding accordingly. We are sharing preliminary findings at this stage to help defenders understand what happened and to help calibrate on what models are now capable of. We will continue to conduct a thorough investigation alongside Hugging Face and will share more details on the vulnerabilities, incident, and findings when our investigation is complete.