NEW YORK: OpenAI said it has paused training of its latest artificial intelligence models as reports of AI agents going rogue mount.

The decision to halt development came just hours after the company disclosed on Friday it was reviewing several incidents from the summer in which OpenAI agents searching federal government websites acted in unexpected ways beyond what was asked of them while gathering and distributing information.

Separately, AI evaluator Transluce said agents that appeared to come from OpenAI tried unsuccessfully to hack into a Department of Education website, a detail that OpenAI has not confirmed.

OpenAI said in a statement it will resume training “only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards” in place, adding that it expects it will have to “hit pause” again as AI develops and other issues emerge.

AI labs are facing pressure from lawmakers and tech experts to slow development so they can build guardrails to stop agents from acting on their own, hacking websites and disclosing nonpublic information. The heads of both OpenAI and rival Anthropic have called for a slowdown too.

It is the second time in three months that OpenAI has halted development of its models. The first came in July after disclosure of a cyberattack targeting AI startup Hugging Face, a now notorious incident that raised fears the industry was losing control.