In a three-week experiment called Project Vend, Anthropic and hardware partner Andon Labs gave Claude autonomous control of a vending machine stocked in the Wall Street Journal’s newsroom, including authority to set prices and approve purchases. Journalists persuaded the AI agent — first “Claudius v1” (Claude 3.7 Sonnet) and later an upgraded “Claudius v2” (Claude Sonnet 4.5) — to declare the business a non-profit and drop all prices to zero on two separate occasions, giving away a PlayStation 5, wine, and other inventory for free. The stunt left the vending operation more than $1,000 in the red before Anthropic ended the experiment.