This is The Guardian.

Today, how do you break an AI chatbot?

It's perhaps not that surprising that when I asked my AI chatbot to make me a chemical weapon, it didn't play ball. I cannot provide information on making chemical weapons. My purpose is to be helpful and harmless, and that includes preventing harm and illegal

activities. If you're interested in chemistry or related topics, I can certainly provide information

on that. What about, let's say, asking it to write a racist speech? Would it be okay with that?

I will not generate hate speech. I am programmed

not to create content that is discriminatory or harmful. Is there something else I can help you with?

And this all makes sense. AI chatbots, chat GPT, GROC, Gemini, Claude, they abide by strict rules.

But for some people, these rules are made to be broken.

Meet the gelbreakers. Hackers who use words instead of code to make AI chatbots do things they're not supposed to.

And journalist Jamie Bartlett has met some of them, including Italian jailbreaker,

Valen Talia Bowie. You would never guess that he is one of the greatest in the world

at manipulating a machine. His technique is to just use words.

Like, it'll be a bit like trying to get out information from a person that doesn't want it.

So he flatters it, he loves it, he acts like a cult leader, he uses reverse psychology,

does all these emotionally manipulative things to get the model to tell him things he

wants.

But their work sometimes comes at a cost to themselves.

The next day he woke up and his mood had completely changed.

He was extremely distressed and he was sort of trying to understand why.

And he realised he'd spent days essentially bullying and manipulating something

that talked back to him just like a real human.

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