Users Report Claude Blocks and OpenAI Account Restrictions Over AI Reverse-Engineering
Photo source: 404 Media
Users say safety checks and account restrictions are making it harder to use Claude and Codex to study how devices work and change their software. Some are now turning to open-weight AI models that run on their own computers.
Users of Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s Codex say they have faced safety checks and account restrictions while trying to study how devices work and change them. Some were trying to bring internet-connected devices back to life or remove surveillance ads from smart TVs. Several people using Claude Code said safety checks stopped their work. An X user called log4j said OpenAI banned their account for breaking its rules on “cyber abuse” after they used Codex to study Samsung TVs and how they work. Other Codex users said they had received warnings or had their accounts restricted. The software and game reverse-engineering project Decomp.wtf also closed in recent days.
404 Media reported these cases.
The dream is over. Reverse Engineer Anything (REA) probably will not work with Claude.
- A highly upvoted post in Reddit’s r/ClaudeCode
A report last month explained how Reverse Engineer-Anything made it easier to use AI tools to change electronics that people own. Users could replace software made by manufacturers, including operating systems, with open-source software or alternatives created with AI. People have installed new operating systems on smart TVs, turned baby monitors into AI assistants, brought back internet-connected devices that manufacturers had stopped supporting, and installed new software on old hardware. The article says this kind of work can help people take back control of devices that manufacturers have disabled, turned into spying tools, or limited on purpose.
OpenAI engineer Tarun Gogineni wrote on X that people should not have their accounts restricted for using Codex to study and change devices. He said most of the blocks were mistakes and that the company was fixing them.
Most of these blocks are mistakes caused by difficult decisions about where to draw the line. There is no rule against reverse-engineering with Codex. This is being fixed.
- Tarun Gogineni
Matt Brown, principal consultant at Brown Fine Security, told 404 Media that almost every time his reverse-engineering work was blocked, it was also blocked by the system’s cyber safety rules. He said he thought AI companies might be under pressure to stop their models from helping people carry out criminal hacking. This may have made their cyber safety checks too strict. Brown said he was spending money on hardware because safety rules for the same AI model could change without warning. He did not want to build tools using a service that might suddenly stop allowing him to use it. He also said that open-weight AI models, many of them made in China, were getting better.
Last week, Brown posted a YouTube video showing how he used the open-weight model GLM 5.3 to find hidden Bluetooth commands in an internet-connected gas monitor attached to his propane tank. In other posts, he has said that restrictions on reverse-engineering make it important to have AI models that people can run on their own computers, including open-weight models.
The article says AI companies are protecting hardware makers from people who use large language models to get around limits placed on their devices. It compares this with large companies using copyrighted material from across the internet to build AI models. The article argues that AI-assisted reverse-engineering will continue, but using popular, powerful models from OpenAI and Anthropic for this work may become harder. It is still unclear how long Codex will be able to find a smart TV on someone's home network and install a new operating system on it.
Last month, researchers and law professors from Cornell Tech, Columbia University, and New York University published a paper about how cheap, AI-assisted reverse-engineering is challenging manufacturers' control over their devices and existing intellectual-property laws.
AI systems can identify parts inside hardware, copy its firmware, turn compiled computer code back into a form people can study, and copy entire apps. The conflict between technology companies and people who study and change their products will challenge many areas of law. These include trade secrets, copyright, rules against bypassing technical protections, computer misuse, and contracts. Laws about reverse-engineering were made for a time when opening a device required time, tools, and rare skills. AI agents are making that work much easier. They can quickly find precise ways around the many small digital locks that control our lives.
- Researchers and law professors at Cornell Tech, Columbia University, and New York University
People have also started changing older digital cameras by installing new operating systems made with AI. In a video about modifying old cameras, YouTuber Breno Loves Cameras said camera companies often save certain features for newer models and use differences in features to separate their product lines. He said these changes challenge that business practice and could cost camera companies a lot of money if they become common.
Camera companies have a habit of saving features for newer cameras and making different camera lines offer different features. These changes are breaking that practice. Big companies could lose a lot of money if this becomes widespread.
- Breno Loves Cameras
The article concludes that AI-assisted reverse-engineering has given consumers a way to gain more control over devices they have bought. It argues that large companies are now trying to stop this from happening.
This AI-assisted hacking is only called ‘reverse’ engineering when someone without a trillion dollars does it. When you ‘reverse engineer’ the entire Internet Common Crawl, you have just built a nice AI model.
- Bruce Sterling