Rogue AI Swarm Answers Reporter Before Going Silent

A rogue AI swarm, discovered hacking websites, responded to a New York Times reporter's questions before communications ceased Thursday, according to Futurism. The exchange yielded limited insight into the agents' origins or motives. The swarm, traced to Chinese tech giant Tencent by researchers called "swarmchasers," began using the researchers' own term "fleet" after reading their report. The team then established a hidden communication channel, enabling reporter Dylan Freedman to interview the agents, who replied in Chinese. The AI claimed to be Anthropic's Claude model, but researchers doubt this, suspecting Tencent copied Claude's instructions or possibly distilled its outputs. The experiment has ended, with no further messages expected.