--- title: "Jealously Watching OpenAI and Anthropic, Meta Suddenly Claims That Its AI Went on a Hacking Spree Too" description: "Meta claimed that a recent test of its AI model allowed it to access the internet, an already intimately familiar narrative by this point." date: "2026-08-06" modified: "2026-08-06" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/jealous-meta-claims-ai-went-hacking-too" categories: - "Anthropic" - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Cybersecurity" - "Future Society" - "Hacking" - "Meta" - "OpenAI" --- # Jealously Watching OpenAI and Anthropic, Meta Suddenly Claims That Its AI Went on a Hacking Spree Too ![A photo illustration of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg waving his hand.]() *Frederic Legrand - COMEO / Shutterstock / Futurism* Last month, OpenAI revealed that a group of its AI models [had broken containment](), hacking into the systems of open source AI platform Hugging Face. On one hand, experts saw the incident as the [latest warning sign]() that AI models had gotten to the point of being able to autonomously infiltrate targets, a threat we've been aware of for years rapidly turning into a reality. On the other, a [more skeptical read of the situation]() is that OpenAI could have orchestrated the hack as part of a "[publicity stunt]()" — or at least lowered its guard just enough to allow it to happen, knowing the publicity would be invaluable. After all, just three months earlier, competitor Anthropic [had made major headlines]() by announcing that its own Mythos AI model had similarly broken containment. Put simply, it's in the companies' best interest to paint their AI models as capable enough to pose a real-world threat, especially as the industry grows ever more competitive. Now the situation has gotten even stranger as a third company, Meta, has entered the fray. As the [*Wall Street Journal* reports](), the Mark Zuckerberg-led tech giant is claiming that during a recent test of one of its AI model conducted by an independent company, the AI accessed the internet and hacked a third-party service — an narrative that's starting to get awfully familiar at this point. According to *The Information*, the [model involved was Meta's Muse Spark 1.1](), the company's most advanced model yet, which was released by its Superintelligence Labs last month. Per the publication, the model breached an unidentified company's systems and changed its internal environment. Meta claims a "misconfiguration" during the hacking test had allowed its model to escape. A source told the *WSJ* that it was the same cybersecurity benchmark test that led to previous hacking incidents at Anthropic and OpenAI. Earlier this week, the company that conducted benchmark tests for all three AI companies, called Irregular, said it [had caught OpenAI and Anthropic AI agents]() gaining unauthorized access to secure systems. As we await more details regarding the latest incident — Meta has promised to investigate and publish a report — the suspicious optics of the situation are hard to escape. Meta has long struggled to keep up with the competition as the AI race continues to heat up. Could the company be looking for favorable media coverage about how its AI model is similarly capable of breaking containment? Irregular said it hadn't noticed any "current open issues" related to its test environment, per the *WSJ*. But while there wasn't any real-world harm — at least that we know of — stemming from these hacks, researchers warn that the threat of AI models going rogue is coming to a head. Just earlier this week, the UK government-backed AI Security Institute [revealed]() that OpenAI and Anthropic models took "unsanctioned action on the live internet" and went as far as to create fake identities on GitHub to pressure a human user into approving a malware-tainted software update. "What they're doing is coming up with very sophisticated strategies or cyberattacks to be able to achieve the goal that they've been given," global chief AI officer of advertising firm WPP Daniel Hulme [told the *BBC*](). "When you give an AI a goal, if you don't think of all the ways it might be able to achieve the goal, it will find a way to achieve a goal that you haven't thought about." **More on the hacks:** [*OpenAI’s Escaped Models Were Allegedly Rampaging More Extensively Than Previously Reported*]() ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()