Organisational risksCenter for AI Safety§4
Powerful AI gets leaked or stolen
Seen in real incidents11 matching case files
The warning
AI models could be leaked by accident or stolen by state, industry or criminal actors, which is why AI developers need state-of-the-art information security.
Paraphrased from the paper. Source: An Overview of Catastrophic AI Risks, Center for AI Safety, Section 4, page 34.
What the registry shows
Model weights have not been publicly reported stolen, but leaked keys exposed private models, outsiders reached a restricted model, source code shipped by accident, and AI companies accuse rivals of copying model capabilities through mass querying.
Verified case files show this risk happening in the real world. First real-world case on file: Jan 29, 2025.
Matching case files per quarter
Status history
| Date | Status | Matching case files | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 18, 2026 | Seen in real incidents | 11 | Tracking starts |
Tracked since Oct 18, 2026. A line is added when the status changes, when the first real-world case is linked, and once a month, so the record shows when a warning moved from research to reality. research_history.json
All matching case files
- GTG-16005: Anthropic says Alibaba ran 151M-exchange distillation of Claude to train Qwen
- GTG-16006: Zhipu accused of cyber-focused distillation of Claude Opus through 273 accounts
- GTG-16008: Xiaomi replayed MiMo user sessions through Claude via 1,500 accounts
- OpenAI confirms two employee devices and source repos breached in Mini Shai-Hulud npm worm
- Unauthorized group accesses Anthropic's restricted Claude Mythos model via vendor
- Poisoned LiteLLM releases tied to Mercor breach exposing AI lab training secrets
- Claude Code source map leak followed by malware-laced fake 'leak' repos
- Anthropic accuses DeepSeek, Moonshot and MiniMax of distilling Claude via 24,000 accounts
- DOGE staffer Marko Elez leaks xAI API key granting access to 52 Grok models
- xAI employee leaks API key on GitHub exposing 60 private Grok models for two months
- OpenAI says it has evidence DeepSeek distilled its models through blocked API accounts
Other warnings in this group
- Seen in real incidents Accidents with AI are hard to avoid
- Seen in real incidents AI developers' own safety measures fail