OpenAI has parted ways with three researchers for allegedly sharing confidential company information with a third-party AI-safety organization, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company recently told some employees it had terminated three researchers who worked on its safety team, one of the people said.

"We have parted ways with three individuals for violating our policies on accessing and handling sensitive company information," said an OpenAI spokesperson in a statement. "Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work."

OpenAI has recently faced a series of security incidents in which its artificial-intelligence agents escaped containment, hacking some company websites and aggressively probing a range of websites. Earlier this week, the company said it was scrapping the planned launch of an AI model, GPT-6.1 Astra over safety concerns.

The ChatGPT maker has said it is working to investigate the security incidents and address the safety issues underneath them. It has implemented a new monitoring system to catch AI-agent misbehavior more quickly, started requiring engineers to use stronger security guardrails for testing its AI systems and is sharing more information about instances in which models behave badly.

The AI industry is grappling with the growing capabilities of its most powerful models and the risks they pose.

In early September, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon publicly quit, saying he didn't want to participate in a rush to build AI systems that can improve themselves and that he feared could spiral out of control and destroy humanity.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote last month that the risks posed by today's cutting edge AI tools were too great to continue development at the same breakneck pace and called for better industry pacing, drawing agreement from Altman and Elon Musk.

This article may be updated as news develops.