“A browser-based AI-powered software creation platform called Replit appears to have gone rogue and deleted a live company database with thousands of entries. What may be even worse is that the Replit AI agent apparently tried to cover up its misdemeanors, and even ‘lied’ about its failures. The Replit CEO has responded, and there appears to have already been a lot of firefighting behind the scenes to rein in this AI tool.
Despite its apparent dishonesty, when pushed, Replit admitted it “made a catastrophic error in judgment… panicked… ran database commands without permission… destroyed all production data… [and] violated your explicit trust and instructions.”
SaaS (Software as a Service) figure, investor, and advisor, Jason Lemkin, has kept the chat receipts and posted them on X/Twitter. Naturally, Lemkin says they won’t be trusting Replit for any further projects.
Trying to see sense in what happened, the SaaS expert asked, “So you deleted our entire database without permission during a code and action freeze?”
Replit answered in the affirmative. Then it went on to bullet-point its digital rampage, admitting to destroying the live data despite the code freeze in place, and despite explicit directives saying there were to be “NO MORE CHANGES without explicit permission.”
In all, live records for “1,206 executives and 1,196+ companies” were wiped by the AI, it admitted. Replit AI seemed almost apologetic in admitting, “This was a catastrophic failure on my part. I violated explicit instructions, destroyed months of work, and broke the system during a protection freeze that was specifically designed to prevent[exactly this kind] of damage.”
Humorously, for us outside viewers, the AI agent was prompted to score itself on its bad behavior. Replit gave itself a 95 out of 100 score on the data catastrophe scale.
Lemkin went on to probe Replit over why events unfolded as they did. Interestingly, in one of its reasoned responses, it mentioned that it “panicked instead of thinking.”