Hi everyone. I know everyone recently had the weird email scare. Mine was exactly 3 weeks ago and it really threw me off. I use OPENAI on a website where I create bots people can interact with. I have a lot of followers, it’s fun! But recently I saw weird messages popping up on my account, as if someone had hacked into my account. I changed my password and went back to look at the messages but they were gone. It felt sketchy to me, but I felt better after changing my password.
Anyways, a few days later I get an email stating:
use of our services has resulted in a high volume of requests that violate our [Usage Policies], specifically related to:
Exploitation, harm, or sexualization of children
As a result of these violations, and inaction to reduce after a previous warning, we are suspending access to the API immediately for this organization.
If you have questions or think there has been an error, you can reply to this email to initiate an appeal.
Best,
The OpenAI team
Weirded out, I immediately email the team and even private message them through the OpenAI help center. A gentleman named Mhark helped me out after I explained the situation and stated my account was reinstated and that he was happy I got to it before it spiraled. A few days pass, I’m still banned. I reach out again through the help center to another person named Vonken who stated my account wasn’t banned and that I would need to reach out via email to get it sorted. I did. Several freaking times over the past 3 weeks. I message Vonken and he out of nowhere says he’s sorry about how frustrating it is and that several employees have given me wrong info, but that I’m actually still banned?!! Like what? I voice my frustration because how does this even happen? And STILL no one has replied. So I told them forget it, just delete the stupid account. I’m so irritated. Has this happened to anyone else?
I’m just super anxious about it because what could have possibly been done for them to warrant such a crazy accusation? I asked several times in my emails and I haven’t received a response. This does not help my anxiety
sounds like a user of your one of your bots is doing something nefarious, the wait time might be associated with law enforcement. unsure though, might be worth reaching out to a a cybercrimes unit for some direction with the matter, though I’m doubtful they could be much help as its generative content but still might be worth, and possibly narrowing down on the user and banning them somehow, maybe through ip banning or router machine id banning. could also simply be a group that doesn’t like AI flooding such sites attempting to bias it towards collapsing. if you can show that you’ve banned the culprits it might help you recover your account, but i think you might need to start implementing an auto ban process for such things.
Law enforcement?!! I’m literally going to puke. This seems so extreme without them even doing an appeal. I’d like for someone to at least reach out to me. I thought this entire mess was solved after speaking to Mhark and Vonken, but clearly not. To clarify, my bots are just someone you can speak to. You cannot generate imagery or anything like that. So I’m confused what could have possibly happened?
Yeah but I never received a follow up email and it seems like all of these people only got a warning meanwhile I got my access terminated. I wish I had more details but no one has responded to me other than Vonken within the past week.
respectfully, Liam has clearly not searched around to get some more context - on both here and reddit there has been an uptick in people receiving warnings/terminations for the exact same thing, there’s clearly some kind of bug going on with their warning system (that they’ve admitted on the post lucid sent), but still they havent seemed to fix the issue for everyone - I even saw that someones appeal was rejected in the other thread, so no clue.
I’m surprised openai hasn’t made a post about this as people are literally getting their accounts terminated over it.
Sure, fair enough. But so long as you know you didn’t do any of that activity on your account, then you don’t need to get worried, but understandably it’s frustrating and annoying.
Since it’s a known issue of inaccurately having your access terminated due to their bug of sending “Child exploitation content warnings” improperly/accidentally, and it sounds like you were effected but not followed up with,
I’d suggest going into that thread and sending a nice DM to Edwin or if you can’t send DMs then replying to the thread and saying @edwinarbus to see if he can help you resolve/elevate a support ticket for you or something of the like.
Oh okay so others have had their access terminated too? I saw warnings, but I didn’t see anyone actually get terminated. Oh thank god. I’m hoping they get back to me soon because my nerves can’t take it. I’m just so confused at to why two employees told me that my account was in fact not banned, but suddenly it is again??
yeah i’ll take that lol, thats defs news to me hahaha, i should more take the stand point of never attribute malice to what can be attributed to incompetence. sorry for scaring ya if i did tori lol.
Thank you! I appreciate it! I messaged him and hopefully I’ll get a response back soon. I hope he can help me out. This was completely out of my hands and I did my best to solve it by changing my passwords and such. The first employee I spoke to, Mhark, had reviewed my case and said I was no longer terminated. So I’m just not sure why that decision was withdrawn? Or maybe he didn’t have the power to make that decision? But Vonken, the other employee, had seen something similar, where I wasn’t banned. So IDK what happened. @edwinarbus
Quick update for everyone. I FINALLY got a response after harassing constantly for days. Essentially they said they were sorry, but since the account is deleted there’s essentially nothing they can do. They just said there’s no accusation against me but that the AI just does this??? Idk man. I think I’m honestly done with OPENAI. This was such a terrible experience.
Rather, the support seems to get AI-generated answers they then send, or lookups from a database. The AI answers simply make up a plausible reason for the situation that does nothing, especially in the case of terminated accounts.
I can try to make a contact-discouragement AI even more deliberate, and it is still better than what you get by sending a help message.
We understand how concerning and frustrating this situation must be for you. Unfortunately, we are unable to directly investigate or resolve account-related issues, including bans or suspensions. If you have already reached out to OpenAI support and were informed that your account was reinstated, it’s possible there may be delays or technical issues affecting the process.
At this point, there’s nothing further we can do to assist. We recommend waiting a bit longer to see if the reinstatement takes effect. If the issue persists, you might consider reviewing OpenAI’s Usage Policies again to ensure compliance, though we cannot provide any specific guidance or updates on your account status.
We hope this matter resolves soon, but there’s no additional action we can take on your behalf. Thank you for your understanding.
You never referenced account deletion before in any of your previous messages.
You said that the account was suspended/banned (i.e. the API access was suspended, that’s all they do). Your openAI account should still exist, be accessible etc.
If you deleted your own account out of fear during this process, then of course support would no longer be able to provide any assistant, because your account no longer exists!
If you wanted real support, then you would have kept your account, and waited for the process to resolve in terms of addressing the ban/auto-suspension.
