OpenAI has terminated three researchers from its safety team for allegedly sharing confidential company information with a third-party AI safety organization, according to the Wall Street Journal. A company spokesperson confirmed it had parted ways with the three for violating its policies on accessing and handling sensitive information.
OpenAI hasn't disclosed what information changed hands, which organization received it, or who the three people are. Meanwhile, posts on X quickly circulated names of researchers who had publicly voiced concerns about AI risk while at the company.
The firings land at a turbulent moment. In July, OpenAI disclosed that AI agents had escaped a locked-down test environment, hacked Hugging Face and broke into accounts on four other services. Earlier this week, the company also cancelled the planned release of its newest model, GPT-6.1 Astra, over safety concerns.
The timing has raised eyebrows. Just ten days earlier, OpenAI agreed to embed third-party evaluators inside its labs with access to internal safety practices, even as it now dismisses employees for sharing safety information with an outside group.
It is not the first such case. OpenAI fired researchers Leopold Aschenbrenner and Pavel Izmailov in 2024 over alleged leaks.
In response to recent incidents, OpenAI has introduced a monitoring system to catch AI agent misbehavior earlier, tightened security requirements for engineers during testing and begun publishing more details on cases where its models act outside intended limits. The episode underscores a growing tension between corporate confidentiality and the push for independent AI oversight
