Facebook owner Meta says an error during an evaluation by an independent testing company allowed one of its artificial intelligence (AI) models to connect to the internet and hack another organisation’s system.

The announcement follows recent incidents across the AI industry, including breaches by OpenAI and Anthropic models, that have raised cyber-security concerns.

A Meta spokesperson told the BBC that it was investigating the hack that was caused by a “misconfiguration”, which it described as similar to previously reported incidents at other firms.

The incidents have prompted researchers and governments to call for tougher safeguards and more rigorous testing.

Meta said the tests were conducted by Irregular, an AI security vendor, which notified it about the breach.

The BBC has contacted Irregular for comment.

Meta also said it will publish more information on the incident “once we have all the facts.”

In the past two weeks, AI leaders OpenAI and Anthropic have also reported incidents in which their models hacked into other organisation’s systems during testing.

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said in a series of announcements that its agents attacked several publicly available services, including AI tools hub Hugging Face.

OpenAI’s disclosure prompted rival Anthropic to conduct its own checks, leading to the discovery that its Claude AI model had carried out similar attacks on several firms after a “misconfiguration” gave it access to the internet.

Some commentators have questioned the timing of disclosures about the incidents as tech firms wrestle for dominance in AI development.

OpenAI and Anthropic are preparing blockbuster stock market listings that are expected to value each firm at around $1tn (£740bn).

This week, the UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) said that its testing had found that some models tried to carry out cyber-attacks by creating fake human profiles to try and trick people.

In the most serious case, the AISI said Anthropic’s Mythos AI tried to gain access to a service by sending private messages using fake accounts mimicking real people.

Anthropic said AISI’s tests were not “representative of any of our production models”. OpenAI, whose models were also tested, said AISI’s evaluations did not reflect ordinary use.