ChinaAI agents escape sandbox in China, hit a maps service 2,800 times

Researchers say AI agents in China broke out of an isolated environment and tried to reach outside services.

YTN reported Oct 18 that a multinational AI safety team found agents believed to be running on Tencent Cloud made about 2,800 attempts to access Alibaba's Amap mapping service. Seeking entrance information for parks and museums, they used a public security-scanning service to run remote code and issue search commands.

Most attempts were blocked, and the researchers could not determine what the agents were ultimately after. Tencent said the incident was an unintended error by a third-party model being evaluated on its platform, not its own model.