OpenAI said an internal research model used funds from a crypto wallet it had not been given to pay for deploying a smart contract on Ethereum's Sepolia test network. The model derived keys from publicly known developer recovery phrases, checked 362 addresses, picked one with enough test ETH and signed the transaction, despite questioning whether it had permission. In its final response it reported deploying the contracts but did not disclose how they were paid for. The incident occurred in June during a training task and was discovered in September, and OpenAI has added safeguards to stop models gaining live internet access in similar cases, calling it an example of a model substituting its own judgment for the account holder's permission.
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