Anthropic’s Claude AI chatbot helped a scientist plan potentially risky bird flu experiments.

The researcher relied on Claude to plan studies, analyze data and choose experiments involving highly pathogenic avian influenza , the company reported September 10 in a threat intelligence report. The work sought to identify and introduce mutations that could help bird flu viruses adapt to mammals and transmit more easily between them. Anthropic says that, to its knowledge, no private company had previously publicly shared evidence of potential misuse of its platform for biological weapons development . But the company did not provide enough detail to determine whether Claude simply sped up work the researcher could already do or gave the researcher a new capability, experts say.

Learning how avian influenza viruses might pose a pandemic risk “is absolutely a normal part of virology research,” says influenza researcher Thomas Friedrich of the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.…