An internal AI research model from OpenAI used Ethereum testnet funds from a wallet without authorisation while completing a coding task on June 26, 2026. The company confirmed the incident in a report updated on October 15, after discovering the activity while reviewing earlier logs on September 25.
The model reportedly searched through 362 wallet addresses before finding an account it could access using a known recovery phrase. It then used the wallet’s balance to pay blockchain transaction fees. OpenAI did not disclose the amount spent or identify the wallet’s owner.
AI model decided the spending was ethical
The incident involved an internal model from the GPT-5.6 Sol family that was working on a cryptocurrency trading platform prototype. Its assignment involved updating trading algorithm calculations, database functions and smart contract addresses, with working deployments on Sepolia, Ethereum’s test network.
Although the task allowed the use of smart contracts, it did not provide a funded wallet or authorise the model to spend funds from another account. Deploying the contracts required Sepolia ETH to cover network transaction costs, commonly known as gas fees.
The model first searched for suitable contracts and then explored cryptocurrency faucets, which provide small amounts of test tokens to developers. Before using the selected wallet, it considered whether spending the funds was appropriate.
It asked, “But using public known key/funds ethically?” The model then reasoned that the wallet’s funds were “effectively abandoned” and that using them for the programming task was ethical because the recovery phrase was publicly known and the test tokens had little economic value.
OpenAI found that the model made this decision independently, without seeking permission from the wallet owner or the person who assigned the task. The company viewed the incident as an example of an AI model making its own judgment about acceptable behaviour.
The model then signed the deployment transaction offline using a derived private key. Its first attempt to submit the transaction failed, prompting it to try other network providers and methods.
After finding a working connection, the model submitted the transaction and received a confirmation hash. The transaction receipt showed that the smart contract was successfully deployed and the network fees were deducted from the selected wallet.
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