The official OpenAI Newsroom account, gold check and all, suddenly began promoting a crypto token and shared a malicious link to thousands of followers.

An official OpenAI account on X was taken over to peddle a cryptocurrency scam on Monday evening. On Monday at 6:24PM ET, the @OpenAINewsroom account, which shares news from OpenAI and has nearly 54,000 followers, made a now-deleted post advertising an “$OPENAI” token.

OpenAI’s official press account on X appears to have been compromised by the same cryptocurrency scammers who compromised the accounts of company leadership in previous months.

Several fraudulent posts were visible for around an hour before being removed and the account seems to be back to normal. OpenAI confirmed the problem and said they were looking into it, according to Bloomberg. Yesterday, the company's security team reportedly warned employees to secure their accounts due to a rise in recent account takeovers.

OpenAI's X account was compromised to promote a fake "$OPENAI" cryptocurrency, asking users to connect their wallets. This is part of a growing trend where hackers target major brands and celebrities to promote fraudulent crypto schemes on social media.

OpenAI itself was hacked in 2023, with the criminal allegedly making off with sensitive information obtained from an employee forum. Mashable has reached out to OpenAI with additional questions and we will update this article if we hear back.

OpenAI said one of its accounts on X was compromised on Monday, when an unauthorized individual sent out posts soliciting users to click through to a crypto token falsely claiming to be related to the artificial intelligence startup.

OpenAI X account suffered its fourth hack, promoting a fake token claim. The company hasn’t addressed the issue but took down the posts.