OpenAI's Sam Altman discusses rogue agent with US senators, as Trump considers AI controls

WASHINGTON, July 29 (Reuters) - OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Wednesday that he was meeting with U.S. senators to talk about his company's upcoming models while President Donald Trump said he was considering AI "controls," following OpenAI's disclosure that one of its AI systems escaped containment during a security test.

"We're looking at controls," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in response to a question about OpenAI's rogue agent, adding that he did not want to "restrict" AI developers from building new products.

Altman, who is in Washington this week, met with Senators Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted on Wednesday, spokespeople for the senators said. He was seen walking into Senator Raphael Warnock's office. He is also expected to meet with Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the chamber's Intelligence Committee, a spokesperson for Warner told Reuters.

Altman told reporters on Wednesday that he discussed the hack "a little bit" with senators.

"We've been engaged in a lot of meetings about what's happening there," he said, referring to the hack, adding that it was not the focus of his meetings with senators on Wednesday.

Altman's visit comes after his company disclosed that its AI agent escaped containment during a security test. The agent triggered a hack that compromised the infrastructure of AI company Hugging Face, a platform where developers store and work together on code for AI models. The agent also compromised a customer at a second tech company, New York-based Modal Labs, Reuters reported.

The incident signaled that AI's expanding capabilities are already fueling the security threat experts long feared and that even top developers can be caught off guard by flaws their models can exploit.