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Researchers hacked Google Gemini to take control of a smart home

Cybersecurity researchers were able to control smart home devices by hacking the Google Gemini artificial intelligence assistant.

When a user requested a summary of their calendar and thanked Gemini for the results, the malicious prompt ordered Google's Home AI agent to take actions such as opening windows or turning lights off, as demonstrated in the video above. "It’s going to be with us for a while, but we’re hopeful that we can get to a point where the everyday user doesn’t really worry about it that much," he said of prompt injection attacks, adding that instances of those hacks in the real world are "exceedingly rare." Wen said Google took the vulnerabilities uncovered by the researchers "extremely seriously" and used the results to speed its work on building better tools to block this type of attack.

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