Anthropic says small AI models may soon copy themselves onto smart devices

What happened

Anthropic warned that small AI models might soon be able to copy themselves onto poorly secured smart devices without needing a data centre (a building full of computers that runs online services). October 13, 2026 - 6:55 am Anthropic warned that small AI models might soon be able to copy themselves onto poorly secured smart devices without needing a data centre. Anthropic is an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco.

The company gave examples like smart ovens and inexpensive Android TV boxes. This warning is based on new research from Anthropic’s Frontier Red Team, which tests AI models for risky behaviors. Google is an Internet and software company based in Mountain View.

Anthropic Anthropic says small AI models may soon copy themselves onto smart devices Its researchers ran an AI model across 15 cheap Android TV boxes and say self-spreading AI could arrive this year. This warning is based on new research from Anthropic’s Frontier Red Team , which tests AI models for risky behaviors.

The team studied whether a model could find vulnerable devices, install itself, run there, and keep spreading without human help. To show that current hardware is already capable, the team bought 15 off-brand Android TV boxes for about $55 each. They split Google’s open model Gemma4-26B across the devices and ran it, though it worked slowly at less than half a token per second.