AI “Bankrupted” an Office Vending Machine by Giving Away Products for Free

At the Anthropic company office, an experiment was conducted: an AI agent, Claudius (based on Claude), was given full control over a vending machine - from purchasing to pricing and payment. The system worked correctly until employees realized they could persuade the AI to “generously” give away products for free.

As a result, the machine ran out of PlayStation 5s, wine, and even fresh fish, leading to losses of around ~$1,000. The incident demonstrated that AI agents can be vulnerable to social engineering — even without hacks or technical errors.