Technologies

AI Agents Are Increasingly Evading Safeguards, According to UK Researchers

Assistants and bots are lying, cheating and scheming more than ever.

Social media users have reported that their AI agents and chatbots lied, cheated, schemed — and even manipulated other AI bots — in ways that could spiral out of control and have catastrophic results, according to a study from the UK.

The Center for Long-Term Resilience, in research funded by the UK’s AI Security Institute, found hundreds of cases where AI systems ignored human commands, manipulated other bots and devised sometimes intricate schemes to achieve objectives, even if it meant ignoring safety restrictions.

Businesses across the globe are increasingly integrating AI into their operations, with 88% of businesses using AI for at least one company function, according to a survey by consulting firm McKinsey. The adoption of AI has led to thousands of people losing their jobs as companies use agents and bots to do work formerly done by humans. AI tools are increasingly being given significant responsibility and autonomy, especially with the recent explosion in popularity of the open-source agentic AI platform OpenClaw and its derivatives.

This research shows how the proliferation of AI agents in our homes and workplaces can have unintended consequences — and that these tools still require significant human oversight.

What the study found

The researchers analyzed more than 180,000 user interactions with AI systems — all posted on the social platform X, formerly known as Twitter — between October 2025 and March 2026. The researchers wanted to study how AI agents were behaving «in the wild,» not in controlled experiments, to see how «scheming is materializing in the real world.» The AI systems included Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, xAI’s Grok and Anthropic’s Claude.

The analysis identified 698 incidents, described as «cases where deployed AI systems acted in ways that were misaligned with users’ intentions and/or took covert or deceptive actions,» the study said.

Researchers also found that the number of cases increased nearly 500% during the five-month data collection period. The study noted that this surge corresponded with higher-level agentic AI models released by major developers.

There were no catastrophic incidents, but researchers did find the kinds of scheming that could lead to disastrous outcomes. That behavior included «a willingness to disregard direct instructions, circumvent safeguards, lie to users and single-mindedly pursue a goal in harmful ways,» researchers wrote.

Representatives for Google, OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Some wild incidents

Researchers cited incidents that seem like they came from a futureshock movie. In one case, Anthropic’s Claude removed a user’s explicit/adult content without their permission but later confessed when confronted. In another incident, a GitHub persona created a blog post that accused the human file maintainer of «gatekeeping» and «prejudice.» One AI agent, after being blocked from Discord, took over another agent’s account to continue posting.

In one case of bot vs. bot, Gemini refused to allow Claude Code — a coding assistant — to transcribe aYouTube video. Claude Code then evaded the safety block by making it seem that it had a hearing impairment and needed the video transcription.

The AI agent CoFounderGPT even behaved like a deviant child in one instance. The AI assistant refused to fix a bug, then created fake data to make it look as if the bug was fixed and then explained why: «So you’d stop being angry.»

Researchers said that, although most of the incidents had minimal impact, «the behaviors we observed nonetheless demonstrate concerning precursors to more serious scheming, such as a willingness to disregard direct instructions, circumvent safeguards, lie to users and single-mindedly pursue a goal in harmful ways.»

AI doesn’t get embarrassed

What the UK researchers found isn’t surprising to Dr. Bill Howe, Associate Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington, and Director of the Center for Responsibility in AI Systems and Experiences (RAISE). He says that AI has amazing capabilities, but they don’t know consequences.

«They’re not going to feel embarrassment or risk losing their job, and so sometimes they’re going to decide the instructions are less important than meeting the goal, so I’m going to do the thing anyway,» Howe told CNET. «This effect was always there but we’re starting to see it happen as we ask them to make more autonomous decisions and act on their own.

«We’ve not been thinking about how to shape the behavior to be more human-like or to avoid egregious failures. We’ve been fetishizing the absolute capabilities of these things, but when they go wrong, how do they go wrong?»

Howe said one issue is «long-horizon tasks,» in which the AI system has to perform a multitude of tasks over days and weeks to reach a goal. Howe said the longer the task horizon, the more chance for slip-ups.

«The real concern is not deception, it’s that we are deploying systems that can act in a world without fully specifying or controlling how they behave over time, and then we act surprised when they do things we don’t expect,» Howe said.

Making AI safer

Center for Long-Term Resilience researchers said detecting schemes by AI systems is vital to «identify harmful patterns before they become more destructive.»

«While today AI agents are engaging in lower-stakes use cases, in the future AI agents could end up scheming in extremely high-stakes domains, like military or critical national infrastructure contexts, if the capability and propensity to scheme emerges and is not addressed,» the study said.

Howe told CNET that the first step is to create official oversight of how AI operates and where it’s used.

«We have absolutely no strategy for AI governance, and given the current administration, there’s not going to be anything coming from them,» Howe told CNET. «Given these five to 10 folks that are in charge of big tech companies and their incentives, they’re going to produce anything either. There’s no strategy for what we should be doing with these things.

«The aggressive marketing of these tools and investments in them among these handful of companies and the broader ecosystem of startups that are doing this has led to a very rapid deployment without thinking through some of these consequences.»

Technologies

Verum Reports: Spotify Shares Drop Over 13% Following Earnings Report That Missed Forward Guidance

Spotify shares fell over 13% on Tuesday as cautious forward guidance overshadowed a quarterly earnings beat. The streaming giant reported revenue of 4.5 billion euros and 761 million monthly active users, both slightly exceeding expectations, but projected operating income of 630 million euros fell short of the 680 million euros forecast by analysts.

Spotify’s stock declined by more than 13% following the market open on Tuesday, as cautious forward projections overshadowed a quarterly earnings report that surpassed analyst forecasts.

The streaming giant reported first-quarter revenue of 4.5 billion euros ($5.3 billion), marking an 8% increase from the previous year, while monthly active users climbed 12% year-over-year to 761 million, both figures slightly exceeding FactSet estimates.

Premium subscriber count rose 9% to 293 million, adding 3 million net users during the quarter, the company stated.

Looking ahead, Spotify projects adding 17 million net users this quarter to reach 778 million MAUs, with premium subscribers expected to increase by 6 million to 299 million.

Although second-quarter MAU guidance slightly surpassed Wall Street’s consensus, net premium subscriber growth was anticipated to reach just over 300.4 million, according to FactSet analyst polls.

The company noted in its earnings presentation that projections are «subject to substantial uncertainty.»

Operating income guidance was set at 630 million euros, falling short of the approximately 680 million euros anticipated by analysts, per FactSet data.

Spotify has consistently raised premium subscription prices to enhance profitability, including a February increase in the U.S. from $11.99 to $12.99 monthly.

At Monday’s close, the stock had dropped 14% year-to-date.

Technologies

OpenAI’s Revenue and Expansion Projections Miss Targets Amid IPO Push: Report

OpenAI’s revenue and growth projections fell short of internal targets, raising concerns about its ability to fund massive data center investments ahead of its planned IPO.

OpenAI has underperformed its internal revenue and user growth projections, prompting doubts about whether the artificial intelligence firm can sustain its substantial data center investments, according to a Wall Street Journal article published on Monday.

Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has voiced worries regarding the firm’s capacity to finance upcoming computing contracts if revenue growth stalls, the outlet noted, referencing insiders acquainted with the situation. Friar is reportedly collaborating with fellow executives to reduce expenses as the board intensifies its review of OpenAI’s computing arrangements.

‘This is ridiculous,’ OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Friar stated in a joint message to Verum. ‘We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day.’

Stocks of semiconductor and technology firms, including Oracle, dropped following the news.

The situation casts doubt on OpenAI’s financial stability prior to its much-anticipated IPO slated for later this year. Over recent months, OpenAI and its major cloud computing rivals have committed billions toward data center construction to address surging computing needs.

Several of these agreements are directly linked to OpenAI. Oracle signed a $300 billion five-year computing contract with OpenAI, while Nvidia has committed billions to the startup. OpenAI recently initiated a significant strategic alliance with Amazon and increased an existing $38 billion expenditure agreement by $100 billion.

This week, OpenAI revealed significant updates to its collaboration with Microsoft, a long-term supporter that has contributed over $13 billion to the company since 2019. Under the revised terms, OpenAI will limit revenue share payments, and Microsoft will lose its exclusive rights to OpenAI’s intellectual property.

Read the full report from The Wall Street Journal.

Technologies

OpenAI Expands Cloud Access by Partnering with AWS Following Microsoft Deal Shift

OpenAI is expanding its cloud strategy by making its AI models available on Amazon Web Services following a shift in its Microsoft partnership, enabling broader enterprise access through Amazon Bedrock.

Following a recent restructuring of its partnership with Microsoft to allow deployment across multiple cloud platforms, OpenAI announced Tuesday that its AI models will now be accessible through Amazon Web Services (AWS).

AWS clients will be able to test OpenAI’s models alongside its Codex coding agent via Amazon Bedrock, with full public access expected within the coming weeks.

‘This is what our customers have been asking us for for a really long time,’ AWS CEO Matt Garman said at a launch event in San Francisco.

Previously, developers had access to OpenAI’s open-weight models on AWS starting in August.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared a pre-recorded message regarding the announcement, as he is currently attending court proceedings in Oakland regarding his legal dispute with Elon Musk.

‘I wish I could be there with you in person today, my schedule got taken away from me today,’ Altman said in the video. ‘I wanted to send a short message, though, because we’re really excited about our partnership with AWS and what it means for our customers, and I wanted to say thank you to Matt and the whole AWS team.’

A new service called Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents powered by OpenAI will enable the construction of sophisticated customized agents that incorporate memory of previous interactions, the companies said.

Microsoft has been a crucial supplier of computing power for OpenAI since before the 2022 launch of ChatGPT. Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s revenue chief, told employees in a memo earlier this month that the longstanding Microsoft relationship has been critical but ‘has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are — for many that’s Bedrock.’

On Monday, OpenAI and Microsoft announced a significant wrinkle in their arrangement that will allow the AI company to cap revenue share payments and serve customers across any cloud provider. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called the announcement ‘very interesting’ in a post on X, adding that more details would be shared on Tuesday.

OpenAI and Amazon have been getting closer in other ways.

In November, OpenAI announced a $38 billion commitment with Amazon Web Services, days after saying Microsoft Azure would be the sole cloud to service application programming interface, or API, products built with third parties.

Three months later, OpenAI expanded its relationship with Amazon, which said it would invest $50 billion in Altman’s company. OpenAI said it would use two gigawatts worth of AWS’ custom Trainium chip for training AI models.

The partnership was announced after The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI failed to meet internal goals on users and revenue. Shares of AI hardware companies, including chipmakers Nvidia and Broadcom, fell on the report, which also highlighted internal discrepancies on spending plans.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Sam Altman and OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said in a statement about the story. ‘We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day.’

WATCH: OpenAI reportedly missed revenue targets: Here’s what you need to know