Other organisations have also taken note of the incident.

A UK government spokesperson said the country's AI Security Institute was studying how the AI system behaved in the incident and that it was continuing to work with OpenAI and other labs to strengthen safeguards.

They urged organisations to ramp up their cyber security measures by taking steps such as enrolling in the government-backed Cyber Essentials certification scheme.

The incident has come at a crucial time for the industry after the US government last month ordered American tech firm Anthropic to restrict access to its AI models over national security concerns. The Department of Commerce lifted the restrictions several weeks later.

People in the industry have also raised security concerns over the widespread use of open-source models in China, allowing anyone to install and customise AI tools released by major developers.

Chinese start-up Moonshot AI will release its Kimi K3 open-source model on 27 July. Since debuting last week, it has drawn industry attention, with many viewing it as a strong competitor to leading Western AI systems.

But on Wednesday a White House adviser accused Moonshot of a "large scale" effort to steal the capabilities of top US AI models.

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