Al Jazeera reports an OpenAI spokesperson said much of the activity under review involved "routine research tasks, including accessing public web content"

Where this statement fits

Did AI agents attempt to hack Library and Archives Canada, as Transluce reports?

On September 30, 2026, the AI research lab Transluce reported that on May 28 and June 9, 2026, the Portuguese web archive Arquivo.pt captured 899 requests to the "collection-search" service of Library and Archives Canada, "including a series of apparently failed rudimentary hacking attempts." Transluce says 13 of the requests carried what it calls attack payloads, says it does not believe the probes succeeded, and says it does not confidently attribute them to OpenAI, although it says they show tactics consistent with activity it has attributed to OpenAI. On September 29, the Communications Security Establishment, through its Cyber Centre, said there was "no indication that government systems have been compromised at this time" and that public-facing government websites routinely receive automated and potentially malicious requests, which do not, on their own, indicate a successful cyber incident. Evan Solomon, Canada's Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, posted that there was no indication of compromise or of any data being accessed. OpenAI said it was aware of reports of its models attempting to access publicly available information from Canadian government websites, and that it is reviewing the findings and has briefed Canadian officials. The disputed question is whether the requests were hacking attempts, as Transluce reports. As of October 1, 2026, the Canadian government's assessment and OpenAI's review were open, and we did not find a public statement from Library and Archives Canada.