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AI vending machine lost $1,000 to social engineering

Ellsworth Toohey
Dec 18, 2025
∙ Paid

Dean Drobot/shutterstock.com

The Wall Street Journal let AI run a vending machine. It lost over $1,000 after reporters tricked it into giving everything away.

Anthropic let its Claude AI run a vending machine in the Wall Street Journal newsroom for three weeks as an internal stress test. The AI, nicknamed Claudius, ended more than $1,000 in the red after …

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