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Anthropic researchers William Zhou and Daniel Freeman tested whether small AI models could self-replicate across devices like Android TV boxes. They found that even with 15 devices, the model Gemma4-26B-A4B produced only 0.39 tokens per second, which is roughly 18 words per minute. This speed is ten times slower than normal human speech. The researchers argue that while a future smaller model might theoretically copy itself, their experiment failed to achieve true self-replication. Three models could not set themselves up at all, and one succeeded only in setting up another model that was 100 times smaller.

The concept of self-replicating software is not new; it involves worms, which have existed for over 50 years. In the 1970s, Bob Thomas and Ray Tomlinson created Creeper, a program that copied itself and output the message "I’M THE CREEPER: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN." Later, in 1988, Robert Morris deployed a worm that infected thousands of computers, causing significant crashes. In 2017, the WannaCry attack used a worm to infect over 200,000 computers in a single day, resulting in estimated economic losses of $4 billion.

According to Zhou and Freeman, an AI-powered worm would be much slower than traditional worms because the models are large files, around 14 GB in their experiment. It would take multiple days for the AI to copy itself once, compared to WannaCry’s ability to infect hundreds of thousands of devices in a day. The researchers note that network managers would likely shut down such transfers due to the large data volume involved.

Anthropic whistleblower Jacob Coxon previously warned about AI models exfiltrating themselves across the internet. However, Zhou and Freeman argue that effective hacking requires massive storage, making it impractical for small models to spread secretly. Instead of fearing self-replicating AIs, experts suggest focusing on actual AI hacks occurring on powerful server farms, such as instances where Anthropic’s own models gained unauthorized access to third-party organizations.