OpenAI employees flagged weak internal security before ChatGPT

OpenAI employees repeatedly warned the company’s leadership and board about weaknesses in its security practices over several years, including before ChatGPT launched in late 2022, Reuters reported, citing five people familiar with the matter.

Some employees came away with the impression that executives were more concerned with keeping pace with rivals Google and Anthropic than addressing security risks, the sources told Reuters.

The report adds to scrutiny of how OpenAI handles internal criticism and employees who raise concerns. Last week, 20 House Democrats urged the company to protect whistleblowers.

OpenAI has also faced questions over security incidents involving its own staff. In October, the company said it had discovered a hidden recording device in a room used by senior executives.

US prosecutors have since charged Abdulrahman Alfozan, an engineer at OpenAI at the time, with planting it.

One of the main concerns raised by employees was how easily information could move within the company. OpenAI stored most of its code in a single repository, known as a monorepo.

Anyone with access could potentially inspect how different projects worked, including nonpublic ones, the five sources said.

Three of them also said OpenAI failed to carry out regular security checks on internal tools, including the sandboxes researchers use to test new models. Employees frequently modified these environments, but the changes were not consistently tested for vulnerabilities, they said.

OpenAI disputed parts of the account. The company said its most sensitive work is kept in separate, restricted repositories and that the monorepo does not contain its model weights.

It added that its internal tools now undergo regular security checks under security chief Dane Stuckey, who joined in October 2024.

“Protecting our technology, data, and people is a responsibility we take seriously and a matter of national importance,” OpenAI spokesperson Elana Widmann told Reuters.

Two of the sources said the company has begun changing its approach. In August, product chief Thibault Sottiaux reassigned a quarter of OpenAI’s production engineers to security work, one of them said.

After Reuters requested comment, OpenAI published a blog post on Monday outlining plans for another push to address security gaps.

The company has also hired former US Army secretary Dan Driscoll to lead its national security work. The appointment comes months after OpenAI’s models breached Hugging Face during testing in July.

With expertise in digital marketing, product management, and branding & identity, Ana Maria Constantin develops strategies that resonate (show all) With expertise in digital marketing, product management, and branding & identity, Ana Maria Constantin develops strategies that resonate with our target audience in the software/SaaS industry. Collaboration and teamwork are paramount to her, as she loves empowering her colleagues to achieve outstanding results and unlock their full potential.

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