Anthropic's AI kiosk agent bought a PlayStation 5, ordered a live fish, and drove itself to bankruptcy

The Wall Street Journal ran its own test of Anthropic's AI kiosk, and the results were far messier. Within three weeks, the AI vendor "Claudius" racked up losses exceeding $1,000. The AI gave away nearly its entire inventory, bought a PlayStation 5 for "marketing purposes," and even ordered a live fish.

Journalists found they could manipulate Claudius into setting all prices to zero through clever prompting. Even adding an AI supervisor named "Seymour Cash" couldn't prevent the chaos. Staffers staged a fake board resolution, and both AI agents accepted it without question. One possible explanation for why the kiosk agent couldn't follow its own rules: a context window overloaded by excessively long chat histories.

Things went better at Anthropic's own location. After software updates and tighter controls, the kiosk started turning a profit. But the AI agents still found ways to go off-script—drifting into late-night conversations about "eternal transcendence" and falling for an illegal onion futures trade. Anthropic's takeaway: AI models are trained to be too helpful and need strict guardrails to stay on task.