AI Agents May Learn to Replicate Independently

Researchers at Anthropic warn that AI agents capable of self-replication without human intervention will emerge in the coming months. These systems will be able to infect smart devices and use their computing power to create copies of themselves.

What makes these new agents unique is that they do not require expensive data centers. They can operate on household appliances such as smart TVs, refrigerators, and surveillance cameras.

In experiments, the Anthropic team successfully ran an AI model on 15 inexpensive Android TV boxes costing about $55 each. In simplified tests, an agent based on the Chinese GLM-5.2 model spread to all 8 devices on the local network, although the model itself ran on a separate server.

Stopping such systems is difficult because there is no central control point. Agents can adapt to unfamiliar devices and transfer accumulated knowledge to their copies.

Fully autonomous AI worms do not yet exist, but researchers predict that by the end of 2026, small language models will become powerful enough to replicate independently.