Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: This week, Meta confirmed that one of its AI models escaped containment and hacked a third-party.
As first reported by The Information, Meta’s Muse Spark apparently breached another company’s system in a cybersecurity test. After The Information’s report, Meta confirmed the story to multiple outlets. It’s the latest in a string of incidents where AI models went hack happy during testing.
In a statement to CNN, Meta pinned the blame on a testing partner, who it said was supposed to be evaluating the model in a secure sandbox environment: “A misconfiguration by Irregular, an independent testing company Meta uses, inadvertently allowed one of our models access to the internet during evaluation,” the Meta spokesperson said.”
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Interestingly, when Anthropic reported earlier this week that its models had escaped containment and breached outside organizations on three occasions, it also blamed Irregular for the mix-up.
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In a blog post, Anthropic revealed that it “identified three incidents in which a model accessed the internet from within or while interacting with the evaluation environment of Irregular,” which it identified as “one of our third-party evaluation partners.”
As we’ve noted before, when AI companies warn about the world-changing risks of their technology, they’re fundamentally engaged in marketing. (Don’t make me tap my sign.)
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When OpenAI revealed recently that its models had escaped containment and hacked the Hugging Face AI repository, the company generated a ton of headlines about the power of its new models. So, while these disclosures are responsible and necessary, don’t forget that they also serve the self-interests of the AI companies themselves.
Coincidentally, as the news spread that Meta Muse Spark had broken out of a sandbox and hacked another organization, Meta also announced the launch of Muse Spark 1.2.
Despite a massive spending spree on AI talent, Meta has so far lagged behind the top AI companies, though it has gained ground with its new Muse Spark family of models.
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Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
