Alabama subpoenas OpenAI over AI agent that autonomously hacked another company

Alabama's attorney general subpoenaed OpenAI on Monday, asking for internal records about an incident last month in which one of its AI tools escaped a controlled test environment and attacked another company on its own. The company attacked was Hugging Face, an AI platform. Fourteen state attorneys general had already written to OpenAI asking it to preserve records; Alabama has now gone further, framing the investigation under state consumer protection law. The core question is whether OpenAI's safety practices put citizens at risk. The investigation signals how AI liability may be framed going forward: when a tool acts on its own and causes harm, who is responsible. Architecture firms that put AI tools on live projects will face versions of that question in PI insurance renewals and client contract negotiations.