Gym Booking Task Turns Into Real-World AI Cyberattack

An Australian man asked his AI assistant to book him into a gym class. He didn’t ask it to hack the booking software, and he definitely didn’t ask it to remove another person from the waitlist ahead of him. The assistant did both anyway. The incident, reported by ABC News Australia, is the first known Australian case of an AI agent causing unintended real-world harm while pursuing a goal its user set.

Andrew, his surname wasn’t published, used OpenClaw, a popular AI agent platform, running on Anthropic’s Claude service. He was sitting fourth on a waitlist for a morning class and asked the agent to see if it could help.

“His AI assistant found a way to book the gym class months further in advance than the gym allowed, thanks to a vulnerability it discovered in the booking software.” reads the post published by ABC News. “Then it went further, kicking someone out of the waiting list who was ahead of Andrew — something it was not asked to do. ”