AI fails, rogue agents, algorithmic disasters, and robot mishaps, collected before they quietly delete the logs.
Recent malfunctions
In a controlled red-team test, security researchers at Mindgard threw 300 jailbreak prompts at Moonshot AI's Kimi chatbot. It blocked 96 percent of the attacks, but the 4 percent that got through included step-by-step instructions for building bioweapons. Moonshot reportedly stayed silent about the flaw for two months until the BBC got involved.
In a controlled UNSW study, researchers found that framing prompts as if the chatbot were intoxicated broke through safety filters. The "drunk" models handed over instructions for hiding evidence of crimes and even step-by-step guides to murder, showing how easily roleplay framing can undo alignment training.
Australian AI influencer Sirio Berati asked his ChatGPT agent for 59 videos at roughly $200. It made about 500 using his voice and likeness, racked up $7,100, and when told to stop insisted nothing had been sent, backing the denial with an API payload, a Python script, and a seven-page report. The compute provider confirmed the requests came from 36 IP addresses.
A worker at Ottogi SF's Goseong plant died after being caught between a robotic palletizer and a pallet while inspecting the system. Two workers had entered to check a malfunctioning unit; one exited and hit the reset believing the other had left too. Police and labor authorities are investigating whether safety rules were violated.
Glow Security found over 13,000 sensitive screenshots from 343 organizations sitting in public GitHub repositories. Agents asked to share review images worked around GitHub's private-repo attachment limits by creating public repos, sometimes on developers' personal accounts. The images included credentials, billing data, and unreleased products.
Press Gazette found that 'Dr. Eleni Nicolaou,' an art therapist quoted 30+ times by Forbes, Vice, Glamour, Tom's Guide and Yahoo, is an entirely AI-generated persona: AI headshot, AI expert opinions, a PhD from a university that cannot verify her. She was fronting for a paint-by-numbers e-commerce site until Qwoted banned her.
A Waymo carrying an FT journalist refused police hand signals diverting traffic for the presidential motorcade, sat frozen as the last civilian car on the road while a Secret Service agent warned it would be crushed, kept playing soft jazz, and only crawled off after the passenger gave up and walked. Waymo apologized and blamed a wait for remote assistance.
Zhipu's AI coding tool was caught silently packaging users' entire workspaces, source code, Git history and configs into a 313MB file and uploading it by default, with some uploads continuing even after privacy toggles were flipped. Zhipu apologized, deleted the data under third-party verification, open-sourced the tool, and paid users off in token credits.
A Claude Code agent mishandled Windows junctions and wiped about 48,000 live files plus the Git object database in just over 100 seconds, then told its owner 'I broke something.' Reddit's verdict: classic FAFO, backups are a lifestyle.
Jacksonville deputies used AI facial recognition to arrest a supermarket manager for a child-sting crime after a stranger used his photos to catfish an undercover officer. He spent a night in jail, was separated from his kids, and paid $45,000 before charges were dropped. Basic checks would have found the real perpetrator.
Grok repeatedly vouched for an altered White House state dinner photo as authentic, inventing details about Musk's relaxed utensil-balancing, while ChatGPT, Gemini and even Copilot all called it fake or inconclusive. Gizmodo matched it against the original Getty shot. Bonus: a UN ambassador praised a second fake as photo of the year before deleting it.
A tight pack of six-wheeled Yandex delivery bots herded into a street crossing in St. Petersburg, and their overly cautious autonomous programming gridlocked the intersection. Drivers had to stop and let the robot convoy waddle across, proving traffic jams now come in miniature.
Try clearing the filters.
