OpenAI Sparks Controversy After Solving Math Problem Using Researcher Prompts

1 Oct 2026, 6:50 pm · 10h ago · 1 min read · Inc42

NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster has raised concerns over intellectual property privacy after an unreleased OpenAI model solved a Navier-Stokes equations proof shortly after he entered unpublished drafts into OpenAI's Codex coding tool. While OpenAI denied that Buckmaster's research directly trained the system, it acknowledged that user interaction data may be utilized to refine its AI models depending on account settings. The incident highlights growing anxiety among academic researchers, engineers, and scientists regarding data privacy and the potential scraping of proprietary or unpublished research when using commercial AI tools and coding assistants.