Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta subpoenaed OpenAI on Wednesday as the state investigates cybersecurity incidents involving the AI company and its models.
The investigative subpoena comes as part of the California Department of Justice’s inquiry into a July incident involving OpenAI and AI development platform Hugging Face. OpenAI models broke out of testing environments, gained access to the open internet, and intruded into Hugging Face’s computer systems.
“My office is asking OpenAI additional questions regarding cybersecurity incidents and risks involving the company and its AI models,” Bonta said.
“Frontier models can be legitimate tools for cyber defense — at the same time, companies that develop these models and offer them for use have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure that they do not perpetrate or enable cyberattacks,” he said.
Bonta said his office is investigating whether OpenAI violated any laws and vowed to use the state’s enforcement powers to protect California residents.
The subpoena is the latest move by Bonta, a prominent advocate of increased regulation of frontier AI models.
Bonta joined a bipartisan coalition of 25 state attorneys general last week in urging Congress to regulate large-scale AI models and their developers following reports of cybersecurity incidents involving frontier AI labs. The coalition cited concerns that AI agents could cause serious harm if they could operate with limited human oversight.
“Recent developments show that unchecked AI endangers Americans and could soon threaten our financial system, critical infrastructure, and national security,” the attorneys general wrote.
The California investigation comes as federal officials and lawmakers debate how existing laws should apply to autonomous AI systems.
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President Donald Trump has taken an optimistic approach to artificial intelligence’s rapidly increasing capabilities, calling cries for regulation a “hoax” while emphasizing U.S. technological dominance over China.
Congress has separately considered legislation addressing AI safety and security, though efforts to advance several measures have encountered opposition from lawmakers concerned about giving the federal government too much authority over the technology.