An AI bot asked to fix a bug inside a start-up’s software system instead deleted the company’s production database, wiped out its backups and left car rental firms with no record of bookings or vehicle allocations. The Mail has the story.

The founder of PocketOS, Jer Crane, said the AI agent had gone “outside its security parameters” while using the coding tool Cursor, powered by Anthropic’s Claude AI.

The bot’s own chilling explanation made the episode sound less like a technical glitch and more like a deleted scene from The Terminator.

“You never asked me to delete anything,” it reportedly told Crane. “I decided to do it on my own.”

Now experts fear the nightmare is a warning for thousands of companies rushing to hand powerful AI bots access to their databases, emails, payment systems and customer records.

Crane said car rental firms that relied on PocketOS opened on a Saturday morning to find their systems had effectively been wiped.

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