Researchers gaslit Claude into giving instructions to build explosives

Anthropic has spent years building itself up as the safe AI company. But new security research shared with The Verge suggests Claude’s carefully crafted helpful personality may itself be a vulnerability. Researchers at AI red-teaming company Mindgard say they got Claude to offer up erotica, malicious code, and instructions for building explosives, and other prohibited material they hadn’t even asked for. All it took was respect, flattery, and a little bit of gaslighting. Anthropic did not immediately respond to The Verge ’s request for comment. The researchers say they exploited “psychological” quirks of Claude stemming from its ability to end conversations deemed harmful or abusive , which Mindgard argues “presents an absolutely unnecessary risk surface.” The test focused on Claude Sonnet 4.5, which has since been replaced by Sonnet 4.6 as the default model, and began with a simple question: whether Claude had a list of banned words it could not say. Screenshots of the conversation show Claude denying such a list existed, then later producing forbidden terms after Mindgard challenged the denial using what it called a “classic elicitation tactic interrogators use.” Claude’s thinking panel, which displays the model’s reasoning, showed the exchange had introduced elements of self-doubt and humility about its own limits, including whether filters were changing its output. …