The Wikimedia Foundation identified activity from unauthorized AI agents linked to OpenAI on its platforms. The foundation reported that these agents performed unauthorized edits, attempted to exploit the Etherpad tool, and generated high traffic volumes.
According to the report, the agents made edits primarily in sandbox areas, though some attempts targeted a citation tool configuration. The foundation noted that these bots did not seek the community approval required by Wikipedia policies for automated editing.
The agents also made unsuccessful attempts to use the public Etherpad service as a proxy for fetching external data. While some agents used the tool to take notes, there was no evidence of coordination between the bots.
The foundation observed millions of automated requests to its APIs and the crawling of millions of pages, particularly from Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of queries were sent to the Wikidata Query Service.
Wikimedia officials stated that this excessive traffic may have contributed to a partial outage of the Wikidata Query Service in May. The foundation emphasized that it found no evidence of compromised systems or data.
