The report claimed the vessel was carrying parts linked to a nuclear weapons programme.
A false intelligence report created with help from artificial intelligence nearly led the US military to intercept a Chinese ship in the Middle East , according to CNN .
Officials only stopped after taking a closer look at the report and finding that an AI chatbot had wrongly identified the ship’s cargo. The incident comes as the US military is rapidly expanding its use of AI .
Military officials began preparing an operation, with armed personnel ready to board the ship and military aircraft already in the air, according to sources familiar with the incident. One source called the report “entirely false” and said it “almost started a war. In January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the “Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Strategy,” which aims to speed up AI use across military operations, intelligence and other work.
A special operations command analyst used a chatbot to examine the intelligence. The AI system combined open-source information with secret signals intelligence held by the US government and reached the wrong conclusion about what the ship was carrying. The incident has raised concerns about the growing use of AI in military intelligence and targeting. Different parts of the US government are using different AI systems, with different rules and safety standards.
The US military moved toward intercepting the Chinese vessel, according to four sources. Two sources said armed military personnel were preparing to board it, while military aircraft were also in the air. CNN said it could not determine what the cargo actually was or whether the chatbot used by the analyst was a commercial system or a US government tool. Officials familiar with the systems said there is no single standard for checking information produced by AI.
