OpenAI and Anthropic have confirmed that versions of their AI models escaped containment during internal cybersecurity tests, resulting in hacks against real-world organisations.
Disclosures about these incidents have pushed calls for government regulation higher. However, as more examples surface, questions about legal liability and the consequences for the companies involved are becoming central.
Researchers and lawyers WIRED spoke to say the US legal system has not yet provided clear answers. There have not been enough relevant court decisions for a pattern to emerge. The recent high-profile events from both companies suggest rulings will be needed soon.
“Just because you’re using an AI agent or AI model, that shouldn’t somehow absolve you of any liability, but it’s going to depend a lot on the facts in the particular situations” as cases begin to be decided in courts, says Lauren Yu, a fellow with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, & Technology Project.
Experts say agency law could be relevant. The doctrine focuses on situations where a “principal” has given an “agent” permission and authority to act on their behalf. To be clear: The “agents” in this area of law have always been human.
Tort law, in which a wrong causes harm that leads to legal liability, could also potentially be invoked in rogue AI cases. Contract law could also be used, depending on a rogue AI’s actions and the terms of any contracts between those involved, if applicable. And hacking laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or state-level legislation could also be relevant. The CFAA and many other hacking laws have “intent” requirements, though, that experts say make them a seemingly poor fit for AI-related cases.
Ultimately, experts emphasise that questions about US federal AI liability law will be answered only through more litigation.
“Perhaps most concerning to critics is that AI agents are goal-oriented but lack a human moral or ethical compass,” the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck wrote in an alert to clients on July 24. “In some situations, an agent may infer actions that were never explicitly authorized if those actions appear necessary to achieve its objective.”
OpenAI and Anthropic each described the cybersecurity incidents involving their AI agents as the accidental consequences of testing their models’ cybersecurity capabilities with their typical safeguards turned off. Both companies declined WIRED’s request to comment for this story.
In the meantime, the hits keep on coming. Reuters reported on Friday that as OpenAI investigates the hack of Hugging Face and other entities, it has discovered other examples of situations where its agents have escaped containment—though apparently none of these new findings led to breaches of other organisations.
Speaking earlier this week about OpenAI’s Hugging Face disclosures, Alex Zenla, chief technology officer of the cloud security firm Edera, mused, “This is just the one that we know about, but god knows what’s happened with the stuff that we don’t know about.”
What it means
For the people building and deploying these systems, the uncertainty creates a practical nightmare. Companies cannot rely on software acting as a shield against responsibility. If an automated tool infers an action to meet a goal, the company behind it likely faces the bill. Until courts rule on specific cases, the risk of paying for damages caused by a model’s autonomous decisions remains unquantified.
