San Francisco, Oct 3 — OpenAI has fired three researchers for allegedly mishandling sensitive company information.

An OpenAI spokesperson said an internal investigation found the researchers shared data with an external AI evaluation organization outside established company procedures.

Two of the three worked in safety and alignment research, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. The Journal identified them as Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni.

“We have parted ways with three individuals for violating our policies on accessing and handling sensitive company information,” the spokesperson said. OpenAI said they were not dismissed for raising safety concerns.

The firings come amid scrutiny of AI safety. OpenAI has apologized for an AI agent that accessed Australian government websites and notified more than 100 organizations about unauthorized AI activity. In July, a model breached the developer platform Hugging Face. The three have regularly posted about AI safety on social media. The case highlights tension between AI labs and researchers pushing for outside evaluation.