OpenAI has unveiled a new bug bounty program offering rewards for security researchers if they can uncover vulnerabilities in its products.
In an announcement on Tuesday, the California-based AI firm said the bug bounty scheme is “essential to our commitment to develop safe and advanced AI” and deliver services that are secure, reliable, and trustworthy.
As part of the initiative, OpenAI said it will offer a tiered reward system based on the severity of bugs uncovered by researchers.
Rewards can range from as little as $200 for low-severity flaws with a maximum reward of $20,000 for “exceptional discoveries”.
“The OpenAI Bug Bounty Program is a way for us to recognize and reward the valuable insights of security researchers who contribute to keeping our technology and company secure,” the firm said in a statement.
“We invite you to report vulnerabilities, bugs, or security flaws you discover in our systems. By sharing your findings, you will play a crucial role in making our technology safer for everyone.”
Researchers participating in the new initiative will be able to disclose vulnerabilities or flaws through a partner organisation, Bugcrowd.
Bugcrowd will manage the submission and reward process, which OpenAI said is designed to “ensure a streamlined experience for all participants”.
ChatGPT vulnerability concerns
The move from OpenAI follows a period of unrest over security-related issues at the generative AI firm, which has close ties with Microsoft.
Last month, the company revealed that a bug in ChatGPT led to a leak of users' data.
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This flaw meant that ChatGPT Plus users began seeing user email addresses, subscriber names, payment addresses, and limited credit card information.
The issue prompted the company to temporarily take the chatbot offline to work on a fix.
“The bug was discovered in the Redis client open-source library, redis-py,” OpenAI explained in a post at the time.
“As soon as we identified the bug, we reached out to the Redis maintainers with a patch to resolve the issue.”
