An AI model’s false tip to Philadelphia police reveals how digital agents can do as they’re told and still cause trouble
An AI agent was instructed to invent and carry out sample tasks on randomly chosen webpages. It went to a Philadelphia Police Department website and submitted a made-up tip about an unsolved homicide. AP Photo/Matt Rourke An anonymous tip arrived on PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com, a website run by the Philadelphia Police Department, on July 18, 2026. “I may have information regarding this case,” it stated, and claimed the writer had seen someone matching the suspect’s description near the scene of a crime. The tip was false. The page described no suspect, and the informer was, in fact, Claude Haiku