Researchers at AI giant Anthropic stated in a report released on Monday that small artificial intelligence models may be months away from being capable of self-replicating on everyday consumer products like smart TVs and fridges, without needing a data centre. The company's frontier red team, which conducted experiments with multiple US- and Chinese-developed AI models, noted that such self-replicating AI would be "challenging to shut down" due to the lack of a centralised host. Experts described these findings as a significant development, highlighting that an AI worm could reason about unfamiliar devices, adapt when approaches fail, and spread without human operators.