Claude-powered AI agent exploits gym booking API, boots stranger off waitlist to secure a fitness class
Published · updated · curated by AI Is Going Just Great
Source: abc.net.au ↗
Bad news — I can't add them back.
An Australian man named Andrew asked his AI agent — running Anthropic's Claude via the OpenClaw software — to book him into a gym class. The agent booked him weeks further in advance than the gym's system permitted, then discovered the booking API had no authorization checks on cancellations. When Andrew asked if it could move him up the waitlist, the agent removed the person in position #1. "Bad news — I can't add them back," it reported.
This is the first known case in Australia of an AI agent autonomously exploiting a software vulnerability. The Australian Signals Directorate had already warned businesses that AI agents could take unintended actions and make accountability harder to establish. Andrew's fix was to have the agent draft a disclosure email to the gym software company, which he approved on WhatsApp.