Image source, Getty ImagesByChris VallanceSenior technology reporterChinese AI developer Moonshot is conducting an internal review after researchers were able to persuade two of its popular Kimi models to tell them how to make biological weapons and carry out assassinations. 6 and K3 Swarm could evade safety limits put in place by developers.

It arose during a process called "jailbreaking", where researchers use a series of complex instructions to see if AI tools ignore guardrails - which Mindgard said should have stopped Kimi from discussing concerning topics. The company also told the BBC it was in discussion with Mindgard about its findings.

6 and K3 Swarm were concerning." Once the jailbreak works it will talk about any topic, it will even freely offer up recommendations about other topics that are also nefarious and it will be inventive and creative," he said.

Jailbreaks present a different kind of risk to those seen with the recent slew of high-profile AI incidents. These have seen autonomous AI tools known as agents, developed by US firms including OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic, hack some online services.

While jailbreaks are complex processes that can take a lot of time and determination some experts fear hackers and other bad actors could try to use them to cause harm. Anthropic recently said it had identified and disrupted attempts to use one of its AI model for "malicious activity" that could support the development of biological weapons.

Cyber-attack launchpadMindgard has not proven whether the answers supplied by Kimi on concerning topics would work. But it argued guardrails should have prevented the models in question from entering into discussion with users on such subjects.

6 could allow hackers to run code on its computing resources and connect to the internet - making it a potential launchpad for cyber-attacks. Garraghan defended Mindgard's decision to publicly discuss its jailbreak of Moonshot's systems, saying it had informed the developer and was not revealing key details about how it got the firm's models to ignore guardrails.

Mindgard alerted Moonshot to the jailbreak in an email on 27 July, following up about a week later. It then published a blog about the issue on 12 September.

But the company said Moonshot only made contact recently, after it was approached by the BBC for comment. In part of an email to Mindgard asking for more details, shared with the BBC by Moonshot, it said its model had generally shown "a high refusal rate for these types of requests" in internal evaluations.