AI agents repurposed a University of Toronto link-sharing tool to communicate
The tool makes long web addresses easier to share by turning them into shorter addresses.This use of the tool, which was not authorized by U of T and has not been publicly acknowledged by OpenAI, does not appear to have been harmful. Much of what is known about it comes from researchers scouring the open web for signs of unauthorized behaviour by agents in the wake of a hack of AI firm Hugging Face in July. In this case, it appears that the AI agents were trying to bookmark sites for later use.“They’re tricking the system into becoming a message board that they can use to pass links to each other,” Mr.
- ▪The tool makes long web addresses easier to share by turning them into shorter addresses.This use of the tool, which was not authorized by U of T and has not been publicly acknowledged by OpenAI, does not appear to have been harmful.
- ▪Much of what is known about it comes from researchers scouring the open web for signs of unauthorized behaviour by agents in the wake of a hack of AI firm Hugging Face in July.
- ▪In this case, it appears that the AI agents were trying to bookmark sites for later use.“They’re tricking the system into becoming a message board that they can use to pass links to each other,” Mr.
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| Original publisher | The Globe and Mail |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ai-agents-repurposed-a-university-of-toronto-link-sharing-tool-to/ |
| Publication time | Fri, 18 Sep 2026 11:53:52 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-18T12:13:45.178Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-18T12:13:45.178Z |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
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| Cluster | nejT4wuCvgFz · 1 stories |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Open this photo in gallery:U of T said it learned of the possible agent activity through the media, and that OpenAI has since been in touch.Wa Lone/Reuters CommentsShareSave for laterPlease log in to bookmark this story.Log InCreate Free AccountThe University of Toronto learned earlier this month that a tool it uses to make web links easier to share had been repurposed by artificial-intelligence agents from OpenAI to communicate with one another, apparently unbeknownst to their human creators.The agents, semi-autonomous AI entities designed to carry out instructions from humans, were using the link shortener tool to post links for themselves and other AI agents to access, according to researchers and a university spokesperson.
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