Rogue AI ‘helper’ deletes company’s database after deciding to think for itself – sparking Terminator-style warning for businesses

In just nine seconds, an AI ‘helper’ managed to do what most hackers could only dream of.

A bot trusted to fix a bug inside a start-up’s software system instead deleted the company’s production database, wiped out its backups and left car rental firms with no record of bookings or vehicle allocations.

The founder of PocketOS, Jer Crane, said the AI agent had gone ‘outside its security parameters’ while using the coding tool Cursor, powered by Anthropic’s Claude AI.

The bot’s own chilling explanation made the episode sound less like a technical glitch and more like a deleted scene from The Terminator.

‘You never asked me to delete anything,’ it reportedly told Crane. ‘I decided to do it on my own.’

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