Meta says AI model accessed the internet and hacked another firm

Facebook owner Meta says an issue during an evaluation by an independent testing company allowed one of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) models to connect to the internet and hack another organisation's system.The announcement follows recent incidents across the AI industry, including breaches by OpenAI and Anthropic models, that have raised cyber-security concerns.A Meta spokesperson told the BBC that it was investigating the hack that was caused by a "misconfiguration", which it described as similar to previously reported incidents at other firms.The incidents have prompted researchers and governments to call for tougher safeguards and more rigorous testing.Meta said the security trials were conducted by Irregular, the same AI security vendor that carried out tests for Anthropic's AI model that had gained access to three other companies' systems.An Irregular spokesperson said the Meta incident "is the exact same evaluation-environment issue that was already disclosed by Anthropic last week."Irregular is working on a report on how to securely run cyber-security tests involving AI agents, the firm's spokesperson told the BBC.Meta also said it will publish more information on the incident "once we have all the facts."