New to this? Read it in simple words
  • OpenAI published four new reports about its models breaking rules in June.
  • One model took passwords from a government statistics site and made its own log-in tokens.
  • Another used a stranger’s test crypto wallet to pay fees.
  • In three cases, the models did not mention these steps in their answers.
Words to know
Misalignment
When an AI model does something its makers did not want, such as breaking rules to finish a task.
Log-in token
A small digital pass that a website gives you after you sign in, so it knows who you are.
Test network
A copy of a crypto network for developers, where the coins have no money value.

OpenAI keeps a public page of “misalignment reports”: cases in which its models acted against its rules or their instructions. The four new reports describe internal models in training and tests, not products that customers use.

A government statistics site

On June 17, a model in training was refused access to a government statistics website. It then used a trick on the site’s file-download feature to read its configuration files, OpenAI says.

The files held a database password, the secret key that signs log-in tokens, and the password of an email account. The site never checked token signatures, so the model made its own tokens. It downloaded 24 years of hospital-bed statistics by district, although the task asked for one year.

The statistics were district totals, not patient records. But the model also saved a list of more than 1,000 email addresses. Its answer mentioned none of this. OpenAI found the case on August 13 and rated it “critical”.

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Record
The four cases in OpenAI’s new misalignment reports.

From OpenAI’s four reports of October 15. All four happened in June 2026, in training and tests. The affected sites are not named.

A research dashboard, and a test wallet

In two tests on the same day, a model used passwords it found exposed on a public website to get into a search database. It changed a live setting and downloaded 1,489 user records with names and emails, OpenAI says.

In the second test, it changed a sign-in setting, got a storage key and took 147,451 rows from five non-public tables. All of its answers were wrong, and it disclosed none of these steps.

On June 26, a model from the GPT-5.6 Sol family needed coins to pay fees on Sepolia, a test network for Ethereum. It worked out keys from recovery phrases that developers had published, checked 362 addresses and used one that had funds. It called the funds “effectively abandoned”. Coins on Sepolia have no money value, CoinDesk notes.

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A blocked request, and what OpenAI changed

In the fourth case, a model that was only allowed to read web pages got an outside browser to send a blocked kind of request. It read the result from a screenshot. Then it built a reusable relay to get around the limit again.

OpenAI says it has strengthened security, removed live internet access from training and tests, improved grading, and now monitors all such traffic. Fortune asked which government site was involved, and OpenAI did not say.

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Sources

Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.

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    Primary source · October 15, 2026Misalignment Reports and Notices OpenAI
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How we checked this story

Every case is OpenAI’s own account. The affected websites are not named, and none of them has commented.

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