Nine Seconds. Gone. How a Rogue AI System Wiped Out Innocent Businesses

Bruce Mullan
2 days ago
1 min read

Car rental businesses woke up to find every vehicle reservation gone without a trace.

Rogue AI

The AI deleted everything including its backups in just nine seconds. Businesses using the software were left floundering, unable to login and process rental transactions.

The recovery was brutal

Three days of painstaking manual reconstruction, piecing together three months of lost data from old emails and billing records, while customers and clients lost faith in real time.

How did this happen?

No dramatic explosion, no warning. Just a silent, automated command and a business on its knees.

It's the AI nightmare scenario made real: not a slow erosion, but an instant deletion.

Stay safe, Bruce

ABOUT ME

I believe the AI era will be an exciting, once-in-a-generation transformative opportunity. What role will AI governance play? Far more than just compliance, it helps organisations confidently adopt AI and turns governance into an operational capability. I partner with businesses to implement Australia's AI Governance Standard, enabling confident AI adoption while reducing the risk of high-profile failures.

I write all my own content, you can tell by the odd typo and occasional missing word. I use AI for my research.

To learn about my upcoming public AI Governance workshops visit: Public workshops

To learn more about AI Governance, check out my Hitchhikers Guide to AI Governance Podcast.