{"id":629601,"date":"2026-10-13T19:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T19:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/629601\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T19:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T19:34:09","slug":"anthropic-warns-of-ai-worms-spreading-across-smart-gadgets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/629601\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropic warns of AI \u2018worms\u2019 spreading across smart gadgets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The researchers modelled their estimate on Kimwolf, a botnet \u2013 a network of hijacked devices controlled by hackers \u2013 that infected more than two million devices at its peak, mostly off-brand Android TV boxes.<\/p>\n

An AI worm of this kind would likely be slow, taking days to copy itself, William Zhou and Daniel Freeman of Anthropic said, comparing it to a slime mould or a swarm of fruit flies.<\/p>\n

But once created, it would be hard to stamp out, because there would be no central switch to turn off.<\/p>\n

The researchers said their estimate was rough, since it was based on one type of gadget and one past botnet.<\/p>\n

But over time, the amount of computing power sitting in everyday gadgets is expected to keep growing, while the AI models needed to pull this off are likely to keep getting smaller, the researchers added.<\/p>\n

– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The researchers modelled their estimate on Kimwolf, a botnet \u2013 a network of hijacked devices controlled by hackers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[16891,2840,365,6166,9556,4995,12859,682,138,21136,308864,71,99939,356,13313,5838,16420,9557,308865,13840,5289,3234,111,139,1536,69,1118,2847,3048,4499,15362,67662,27051,8218,1339,97779,85763],"class_list":["post-629601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-able","tag-across","tag-ai","tag-anthropic","tag-artificial","tag-away","tag-behave","tag-being","tag-business","tag-computer","tag-copying","tag-from","tag-gadget","tag-gadgets","tag-giant","tag-help","tag-human","tag-intelligence","tag-internetconnected","tag-like","tag-models","tag-months","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-only","tag-said","tag-small","tag-smart","tag-spreading","tag-themselves","tag-warns","tag-without","tag-worm","tag-worms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}