Anthropic study warns small AI models could soon replicate across consumer devices
Anthropic researchers William Zhou and Daniel Freeman report that small AI models could become capable of autonomous replication across poorly secured consumer devices by the end of 2026. Gemma4-26B-A4B ran across 15 Android TV boxes costing about $55 each, while GLM-5.2 replicated across all eight test nodes in four of five runs; the experiments omitted actual hacking. No current model combines the small size and replication capabilities needed for a fully autonomous AI worm.

