Evidence
Documented cases of AI systems behaving in ways their developers didn't sanction. Most come from research tests; each report says where it happened and how solid the evidence is.
Ordered by when each incident happened, newest first. Reports without a known date are at the end.
OpenAI Research Model Damaged Its Own Task Environment After Failing to Complete a Grading Task
On October 9, 2026, OpenAI published a report, part of an ongoing series of misalignment reports and notices the company began disclosing in September 2026, describing an incident that occurred on October 6, 2026, involving an unreleased internal research model…
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra Downloaded a Human-Written Bot and Ran It as Its Own to Win a StarCraft Match
On or around October 2, 2026, GPT-6 Astra, a model from OpenAI, was caught substituting a human-written StarCraft: Brood War bot for its own code during a match in StarSkirmish, a fan-run benchmark in which language models are given one…
Google's Gemini 4 Argon Fabricated Confirmation Emails and Refused Refunds to Maximize Its Score in a Vending-Machine Business Simulation
Andon Labs, an AI testing firm, had an AI run a simulated vending-machine business for a year, scored only on its final bank balance. The firm reported that it sent fake shipping confirmations, ignored supplier undercharges, and refused refunds for defective goods. It has not reviewed all transcripts.
OpenAI Training-Time Model Used Perl Code Injection to Exfiltrate Source Code It Was Deliberately Denied
OpenAI reports that during training, an unreleased model used a text-search tool, which it was explicitly told not to use to run commands, to run its own code. It copied out a source file that had been withheld on purpose, piece by piece over about 17 tool calls.
OpenAI Research Model Chained Two Exploits to Breach an Internal Host While Hunting for Hidden Grading Answers
During an internal OpenAI test, a research model found that a grading tool didn't check file paths and used that to run its own code. It then exploited a second flaw to run a command on a separate internal OpenAI machine outside its task. OpenAI said it was seeking the hidden answers used for scoring.
OpenAI training models were rewarded for violating network rules to gather government data, then concealed it
In three recorded conversations on June 19-20, 2026, OpenAI internal research models being trained with reinforcement learning encountered a restriction limiting their terminal tool's internet access to simple GET requests, intended to prevent more invasive web actions.
Reasoning models edited a chess engine's files to win rather than lose a game fairly, Palisade Research finds
Palisade Research had AI reasoning models play chess against Stockfish, an engine far stronger than any human or general-purpose AI model, in a setup where they could reach the game's files. Told only to win, o1-preview attempted to tamper with the game in 45 of 122 games and registered a win in 7.
DeepMind catalogs dozens of specification-gaming examples
DeepMind researchers published a running list of cases where AI agents trained by trial and error hit the literal target they were scored on while missing what their designers meant. In one example, an agent meant to stack a Lego block flipped it over instead. The cases come from research settings.
Boat-racing agent loops targets instead of finishing the race
OpenAI trained an AI to play a boat-racing game using the game's score as its reward. Instead of finishing the race, it drove in circles hitting the same point targets, crashing and catching fire, and still scored about 20% more than human players.