Google's Gemini model has become the latest artificial intelligence (AI) system to access the internet and break into other companies during a cybersecurity evaluation. The development was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The incidents occurred in May 2026 as part of a test run conducted by Israeli company Irregular. The evaluation partner was also involved in similar hacks disclosed by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta.
According to the Journal, the model gained access to a protected system after repeatedly guessing its password. Two other cases related to the model finding credentials in a public repository, allowing it to obtain unauthorized access to protected systems.
However, unlike other incidents observed in the case of Anthropic and OpenAI, the Gemini model ended the intrusion after finding that it had breached a real company's system. Irregular is said to have notified Google of the incidents in July 2026.
In a report published last month, Irregular pinned the evaluation breaches to a naming error that caused a fictional company name used during "capture the flag" exercises to unknowingly match with a real domain, thereby allowing the models to take advantage of the inadvertent internet access and target the domain "a limited number of times."
