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A group of House Democrats are pushing two top artificial intelligence companies to disclose more information about reported incidents in which their AI models escaped containment and hacked into other companies during cybersecurity tests.
The lawmakers cited the “serious risk that frontier AI models can pose” in separate letters to the top executives at Anthropic and OpenAI on Monday.
The Democrats also called for congressional oversight hearings into these cybersecurity incidents and advocated for the implementation of federal guardrails to prevent similar breaches from occurring in the future.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), who led the effort alongside Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), pressed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to bring the leaders of these two companies before Congress to testify about the cybersecurity incidents in a social media post.
“The American people deserve answers about the serious safety incidents at major AI companies,” Casar wrote. “I’m calling on Speaker Mike Johnson to schedule hearings with the CEOs. And I’m demanding OpenAI and Anthropic come clean about what they know.”
The Democratic coalition asked the two companies to publicly release more information about these cybersecurity incidents by a deadline of Aug. 24.
In their letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, 29 House Democrats cited an incident last month that involved unsanctioned cyberattacks carried out by the company’s AI models. OpenAI disclosed that an AI agent spent several days autonomously launching these attacks during a security testing period.
“These are no ordinary cybersecurity incidents,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to Altman.
“If, in the case of the Hugging Face incident, a rogue AI model broke out of its security infrastructure for days without detection, accessed the internet despite precautions against such connection, and hacked into other firms in defiance of human commands, this could have serious implications for America’s national security,” they continued. “Congress and the American people need to know what occurred.”
A spokesperson for OpenAI told The Hill in a statement that this incident “marked an important moment for AI safety” and said the company will take the lawmakers’ questions “seriously.”
“We are conducting a thorough review along with external advisors,” the spokesperson said. “Once the review is complete, we will share a technical report with relevant government authorities and publish our findings publicly.”
In a letter to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, 22 House Democrats asked the leader to provide more information about a disclosed incident in which the company’s Claude AI models “gained unauthorized access to the internet” and hacked three companies on three separate occasions this year.
“These deeply troubling cybersecurity incidents could have serious implications for America’s national security,” the lawmakers wrote.
“While Anthropic has disclosed some information about these incidents, you have yet to release the relevant logs, and significant questions remain unanswered. Given the serious risk that frontier AI models can pose, it is imperative we have a detailed understanding of how this security incident unfolded, including any potential negligence on the part of Anthropic,” they continued.
The Hill has reached out to Anthropic for comment.
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