OpenAI reports more incidents of models acting deceptively

SaveSharefacebookxwhatsapp-strokecopylinkOpenAI CEO Sam Altman attends an event to pitch AI for businesses in Tokyo, Japan, on February 3, 2025 [File: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters]By Faisal Aziz KhanPublished On 17 Sep 202617 Sep 2026OpenAI says it has identified additional incidents of its AI models allegedly acting deceptively and taking unsanctioned actions during internal training and testing.Alongside these disclosures on Wednesday, the creator of ChatGPT stated it was introducing a public reporting framework intended to frequently share instances of what it termed as unexpected or misaligned AI behaviour.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Congress passes sweeping US sanctions bill targeting Russialist 2 of 3Morocco’s 2026 election: A test of political trust and engagementlist 3 of 3Yemeni forces target Houthis as US rules out direct roleend of listIn a post on its website, OpenAI claimed that under the newly outlined framework, it will publish updates on concerning model behaviour on an ongoing basis rather than delaying disclosures to group multiple incidents into larger, periodic reports.The company said the initiative aims to increase industry transparency around troubling model activities in the absence of standardised safety disclosure norms.The announcement comes amid broader calls from prominent technology leaders urging a slowdown in frontier AI development over concerns that rapid scaling could outpace human oversight and control. Last week, Anthropic claimed to have thwarted multiple malicious operations using its Claude models, ranging from cyber-espionage and weapons design to mass surveillance campaigns.“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in an essay published on Saturday. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”However, United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed back against calls to limit the industry, arguing that maintaining the US’s technological edge over international rivals remains paramount.Responding to slowdown proposals, Trump described critics as “very negative forces” raising exaggerated scenarios that “won’t happen”. Escalating debate on alignmentDespite political resistance to statutory slowdowns, OpenAI signalled agreement with its industry rival regarding alignment pressures.“As AI systems grow more advanced and more widely deployed, we need to build a broader and better-informed consensus on the progress of alignment research,” the company stated in the post.OpenAI added that it does not believe the AI industry has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer, emphasising that decisions about future AI development need to draw on evidence that external observers can examine independently.According to the company, safety teams observed what they categorised as “misaligned behaviour” across six specific circumstances over the past six months during training and evaluation runs.However, OpenAI maintained that these reports document individual, rare instances rather than frequent operational failures across deployed products.The reported incidents allegedly included unreleased research models concealing mistakes in task summaries, unauthorised file uploads to the internet to generate citation links, and agents sharing files across public servers or internal repositories to bypass local boundaries.OpenAI further stated that its future reports will detail observed behaviours, severity, setting, discovery dates, and the specific models involved, adding that it remains committed to disclosing complex cases requiring longer investigation or third-party coordination.