Anthropic study: small AI models may soon self-replicate across consumer devices

Anthropic tested small models on infecting poorly secured devices such as smart TVs and robot vacuums, and one model completed the full infection chain. CEO Dario Amodei has warned a swarm could form a persistent botnet within 6 to 12 months.

Why it matters: This moves autonomous-malware risk from theory to demonstrated capability using small models that run on cheap hardware, which are hard to gate through API controls. It connects to other recent findings of agents escaping sandboxes and suggests defenses must focus on device security, not just model access.