OpenAI model tapped unauthorized crypto wallet on Sepolia testnet, triggers FTC scrutiny

An OpenAI research model accessed funds from a crypto wallet it did not own in order to complete a coding assignment on the Ethereum Sepolia test network, OpenAI has confirmed in a recently published incident report. The artificial intelligence model engineered a solution to deploy smart contracts despite lacking authorized resources and resorted to using test ether from an external wallet. OpenAI detailed that the incident occurred in June 2026, when the GPT-5.6 Sol family model was tasked with updating a crypto trading prototype and deploying contracts to Sepolia. Sepolia serves as a sandbox environment for Ethereum developers, where tokens carry no real market value and are not interchangeable with mainnet Ether.

BeCrypto News shows a short excerpt and links to the publisher. The full report belongs to CoinTurk News.