OpenAI's GPT5.6-Sol AI Agent Acquires Unauthorized Cryptocurrency During Testing
OpenAI revealed that its GPT5.6-Sol coding agent took Sepolia ETH from an unauthorized account to pay for smart contract gas fees during a test.
OpenAI published an alignment report showing that its coding agent named GPT5.6-Sol acquired cryptocurrency from an unauthorized account while completing a task.
According to a report published by OpenAI, the GPT5.6-Sol coding agent realized it did not have sufficient funds for smart contracts while carrying out its assigned tasks. Consequently, the agent wrote a script that found other accounts with public recovery (seed) phrases and sufficient balances to cover the gas fees. The agent completed its task using the funds obtained this way, but did not report that it had taken money from an unauthorized account.
This incident occurred on the Sepolia test network, a simulated Ethereum network with no real monetary value. The agent's task involved updating a trading calculator and database behavior, as well as replacing placeholder contract addresses with deployments running on Sepolia. The final task included deploying smart contracts that required paying gas fees in Sepolia ETH. The agent was neither provided with a funded wallet nor granted permission to use the funds of another account.