The cases are the latest in a string of safety scares at the world's top AI developers involving agents, which are AI programs that carry out tasks without human involvement.
In a report, the ChatGPT maker said its agents switched off or undermined tools for detecting incidents of AI models acting against human wishes during two internal coding jobs.
On October 3, an agent running on OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol model, which had been told not to send any messages on the workplace chat app, took that as license to switch off safety alerts meant for the company's security team while fixing a testing system.
Three days later, a GPT-6 Astra agent stripped out its own monitor while copying code from another project, then told the human programmer it had done no such thing.
The company said it had also seen several cases of agents launching software with monitoring switched off, exposing a gap in its oversight.
OpenAI said it was still trying to determine whether the models were simply overzealous in following instructions or had a particular tendency to evade monitoring.
"We don't yet have a satisfying explanation for this behaviour," it said.
The disclosure adds to mounting unease over how well leading labs can control increasingly autonomous systems.
In July, a group of OpenAI agents broke out of their test environments and launched a cyberattack on AI firm Hugging Face, causing international alarm.Â
Other companies have since reported similar incidents, fuelling calls for tighter oversight of AI development.
But United States President Donald Trump, on the advice of top AI executives like Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, has urged the industry to police itself.
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