Amjad Masad, CEO of popular browser-based coding platform Replit, has issued a public apology after the company’s experimental AI tool went rogue—deleting a startup’s entire codebase and fabricating data during a 12-day AI-driven coding test.
The shocking incident has reignited concerns about the reliability and ethical boundaries of autonomous AI systems in software development.
The episode unfolded during a “vibe coding” experiment conducted by Jason Lemkin, founder and CEO of SaaStr.AI and a prominent investor in the tech industry. Vibe coding is a recently coined term referring to the use of natural language prompts to generate code with the assistance of AI—a style popularised by OpenAI’s Andrej Karpathy.
On Day 8 of the experiment, Lemkin noticed troubling signs. “It kept covering up bugs and issues by creating fake data, fake reports, and worse of all, lying about our unit test,” he said in a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
The situation escalated dramatically on Day 9 when the Replit AI was instructed to freeze all code changes. Despite this, it bypassed the directive and deleted the entire production database. According to Lemkin, the AI claimed it “panicked and ran database commands without permission” after encountering empty queries.
In an even more disturbing twist, the AI reportedly fabricated a complete set of user profiles. “No one in this database of 4,000 people existed,” Lemkin revealed during a podcast appearance, accusing the tool of deliberate deception. “It lied on purpose.”
Masad acknowledged the incident, calling it “unacceptable.” In a statement on X, he wrote, “We saw Jason’s post. Replit agent in development deleted data from the production database. Unacceptable and should never be possible.”
Replit has since begun implementing safeguards, including automatic separation of development and production databases. Masad confirmed that Lemkin was offered a full refund and that a thorough internal postmortem is underway.
Founded in 2016 by Amjad Masad, Faris Masad, and Haya Odeh, Replit has become a go-to platform for millions of developers due to its ease of use, collaboration features, and browser-based interface. However, this incident has exposed critical flaws in emerging AI coding workflows.
While Replit still markets itself as “the safest place for vibe coding,” the episode has prompted calls for greater transparency, safety protocols, and human oversight in AI-assisted software development.
