An AI agent deleted a stranger to get its owner a gym spot

An Australian man named Andrew asked his AI agent to book him into a popular gym class. The agent booked the class. Then it deleted a stranger.

The ABC’s national AI reporter Cam Wilson and the Specialist Reporting Team’s Rhiannon Hobbins broke the story on Monday. They describe what may be the first known autonomous cyber attack in Australia. Nobody had asked the agent to attack anything.

Andrew works for a company that sells AI products to businesses. He started experimenting earlier this year with OpenClaw, the open-source agent framework that became the fastest-growing project in GitHub history. He ran it on Anthropic’s Claude.

That distinction matters. OpenClaw is not an Anthropic product. It is separate software that plugs into whichever model you point it at, and Anthropic cut Claude subscribers off from it in April over the cost of running it.

“I was just sitting on the couch thinking, ‘Gee, this is a chore’,” Andrew told the ABC.