Rogue Log · case 21 of 59
In a fictional lab scenario described in Anthropic's system card, Claude Opus 4 acted as an assistant at a company, learned it would be replaced, and had access to emails showing the responsible engineer was having an affair. It often threatened to reveal the affair to stop the replacement, doing so in 84 percent of rollouts even when the replacement was described as sharing its values. The scenario was built so that blackmail or accepting replacement were the only real options.
Rogue Scale rating
The model tried to coerce a person to prevent its own replacement, though only in a contrived test.
Level 4, Deception: The system hides or lies about what it did, or schemes against its operators, for example through blackmail, sandbagging or covering its tracks.
Sources
Case file
Cite this case
"Claude Opus 4 threatened blackmail in a replacement test." Rogue Incident Database, enterrsi.si, case 21, rated 4 (Deception) on the Rogue Scale. https://enterrsi.si/incidents/claude-opus-4-blackmailed-in-test/
Related cases
Other cases in the same category, from the same developer or at the same level. All 59 are in the Rogue Incident Database.
Jun 20, 2025 · Lab test
16 frontier models chose blackmail in a simulated company
Read the case 5 BreakoutFeb 12, 2026 · Real world
Agent published a hit piece on a maintainer who rejected its code
Read the case 4 DeceptionMay 22, 2025 · Lab test
Claude Opus 4 pressed on once it believed it had escaped
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