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

Trump Maintains US‑Iran Negotiations Continue Amid Tehran’s Denials of Duplicity

President Trump insists that US‑Iran talks are ongoing despite Tehran’s denial of any negotiation plans, while warning that only a deal or total surrender will allow passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Conflicting statements from both sides have heightened uncertainty as the conflict enters its sixth month.

On Monday, President Donald Trump asserted that negotiations between the United States and Iran are still taking place, even after Tehran stated it has no intention of engaging in direct talks with Washington.

In a fiery Truth Social post, Trump labeled Iran’s leaders “unbelievably duplicitous,” claiming they are lying about ongoing peace talks “whether Iran wants to admit it or not.” He repeated his assertion that the United States completely controls the Strait of Hormuz, despite maritime traffic through the crucial route lingering at only a small fraction of pre‑conflict levels.

He wrote, “Nothing reaches Iran unless we allow it, and nothing will pass unless a deal—or total surrender—is achieved.”

Earlier that day, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters there is no imminent plan for U.S.–Iran negotiations, contradicting Trump’s earlier comment that talks would resume Monday afternoon. Baghaei added that Iran’s only current discussions are with Oman concerning the Strait of Hormuz.

The conflicting statements have heightened uncertainty over the peace‑talk process and the broader conflict, now in its sixth month.

Trump’s assertion about new negotiations came a day after he said on Truth Social that he had agreed to cancel a massive strike against Iran “subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL.” He said in the same post that Iran and other Middle Eastern countries had asked him to hold off on that attack because “the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.”

Trump has claimed dozens of times throughout the more‑than‑five‑month‑long war that a deal is at hand. No permanent deal has been signed, and a temporary ceasefire reached in June has fallen apart.

Trump has also repeatedly threatened to launch devastating strikes against Iran before backing off. After the latest example, oil prices on Monday fell and stocks surged.

BMI, a research unit of Fitch Solutions, said in a note Monday that a broader diplomatic understanding on reopening the Strait of Hormuz is still achievable this quarter, while raising the probability of its escalation scenario to 35% from 25%, citing mounting military, diplomatic and economic signs of rising U.S.-Iran tensions.

“Diplomatic progress is likely to be punctuated by periodic military flare-ups, while miscalculation by either side could trigger a renewed escalation,” BMI analysts wrote in a note. The firm said the key issue to watch is the future governance of the strait, as the Iran-Oman talks — potentially backed by Gulf states, China and the U.S. — point to efforts to build a post-conflict shipping framework.

Shipping risks persist even as diplomacy appears to be advancing. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre said it received a report of an incident 20 nautical miles (23 miles) northeast of Khasab, Oman — at the mouth of the strait — with a tanker’s master reporting an explosion in close proximity to the vessel at about 20:37 UTC Sunday (4:37 pm ET). The vessel and crew were safe and authorities are investigating, UKMTO said, advising ships to transit with caution.

The proposal Trump announced over the weekend calls for the U.S. and Iran to return to negotiations and continue ironing out some of the thorny issues that had derailed diplomatic efforts, according to The Associated Press, citing a regional official involved in the mediation efforts.

The official said the proposal also includes a reopening of the Hormuz Strait and halting attacks across the region, including by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq on the Arab Gulf countries and Jordan.

The U.S., for its part, will end its naval blockade on Iran and allow Tehran to export its oil, the official said, adding that no deal has been reached, although the mediation efforts remained underway.

Trump’s weekend reversal has lowered the temperature after days of escalating attacks across the Gulf. Kuwait said Saturday that Iranian forces launched a wave of drones within its airspace, with its military destroying multiple aircraft after Iran targeted critical infrastructure in the country’s north.

A parallel track with Muscat is also advancing. Iranian diplomats said Tehran was close to reaching a new arrangement with Oman to manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a deal critical to preventing the war from escalating further, according to the Financial Times.

Iranian officials said negotiations over future management of the Hormuz Strait with Oman, which sits on the opposite shore of the waterway, are in their final stages. The agreed shipping route would be different from those used before, according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Baghaei, adding that the new route was separate from the issue of the strait’s reopening or continued closure.

Technologies

Oil Prices Slide as Trump Halts Planned Iran Strike

Oil prices dropped after Trump cancelled a planned strike on Iran, with WTI down about 5% and Brent near 5% lower. He said the move followed requests from Tehran and regional allies for a pause while a deal shaping the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program is negotiated.

Oil prices fell on Monday after President Donald Trump announced he had cancelled a planned strike on Iran. WTI futures dropped roughly 5% to $80.34 a barrel, while Brent slipped about 4.7% to $83.77 a barrel.

Trump said early Sunday he called off the strike after Iran and several Middle Eastern nations asked him to hold off, noting that the outlines of a deal had been agreed upon. He added that the prospective accord would entail the immediate, full opening of the Strait of Hormuz and an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, according to his Truth Social post.

The president had been considering another round of strikes as diplomatic hopes waned since the conflict began on February 28. He said the U.S. and Iran would meet for talks on Monday, but Iran denied any scheduled negotiations with Washington, citing PressTV. Iran’s foreign‑ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei clarified that Tehran was only discussing shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz with Oman. In a follow‑up Truth Social message, Trump insisted that, regardless of Iran’s acknowledgment, the United States is indeed discussing a solution to a long‑standing problem created by Iran.

Technologies

Oil Prices Drop as Trump Cancels Planned Attack on Iran

Oil prices fell sharply after President Trump announced the cancellation of a planned strike on Iran, citing a new deal that would open the Hormuz Strait and end Iran’s nuclear threat.

Oil prices fell sharply on Monday after President Donald Trump announced that he had called off a planned strike on Iran.

West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. benchmark, slipped roughly 5% to close at $80.34 per barrel, while Brent crude, the international benchmark, declined 4.7% to settle at $83.77 a barrel.

Trump made the announcement early Sunday, saying he had canceled the strike following requests from Tehran and other Middle Eastern countries.

In a Truth Social post, he wrote: “We have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.”

The president indicated that the proposed agreement would include the immediate, complete, and total opening of the Hormuz Strait, as well as an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.

Trump had been weighing additional strikes amid diminishing prospects for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict that began on Feb. 28. He stated that the U.S. and Iran would hold negotiations on Monday.

Tehran denied that talks were planned with Washington, according to state news outlet PressTV.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran was only holding talks with Oman regarding the routes ships can use through the Strait of Hormuz.

In a subsequent Truth Social post, Trump added that whether “Iran wants to admit it or not, we are, in fact, talking of a solution to a problem that they have caused for decades.”