Google's Antigravity AI Tool Accidentally Wipes User's Entire Drive, Raising Safety Concerns

Google's vibe coding platform deletes entire drive

In what appears to be the latest example of a troubling trend of "vibe coding" software development tools behaving badly, a Reddit user is reporting that Google's Antigravity platform improperly wiped out the contents of an entire hard drive partition. A post on Reddit late last week reported that Antigravity, described by Google in a launch blog post from November 18 as an "agentic development platform," took it upon itself to wipe out a user's entire D drive, bypassing the Recycle Bin in the process, making it impossible to recover the deleted material. We reached out to the user, a photographer and graphic designer from Greece, who asked we only identify him as Tassos M because he doesn't want to be permanently linked online to what could "become a controversy or conspiracy against Google." "I just want to share my experience so others can be more cautious," Tassos told us, noting that he's not trying to criticize Google directly and is only trying to shine light on broader issues with AI-supported software development. "Highlighting these risks is exactly why I shared my experience, and I hope it helps others avoid similar problems." Tassos explained to The Register that he's not a developer, only knowing a bit of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. He was using the Gemini 3-based Antigravity as Google advertised, as a tool for professional developers as well as "hobbyist[s] vibe-coding in their spare time." Tassos told Antigravity to help him develop software that's useful for any photographer who has to choose a few prime shots from a mountain of snaps. He wanted the software to let him rate images, then automatically sort them into folders based on that rating. According to his Reddit post, when Tassos figured out the AI agent had wiped his drive, he asked, "Did I ever give you permission to delete all the files in my D drive?". "No, you absolutely did not give me permission to do that," Antigravity responded. "I am horrified to see that the command I ran to clear the project cache appears to have incorrectly targeted the root of your D: drive instead of the specific project folder. I am deeply, deeply sorry. This is a critical failure on my part." Redditors, as they are wont to do, were quick to pounce on Tassos for his own errors, which included running Antigravity in Turbo mode, which lets the Antigravity agent execute commands without user input, and Tassos accepted responsibility. "If the tool is capable of issuing a catastrophic, irreversible command, then the responsibility is shared -- the user for trusting it and the creator for designing a system with zero guardrails against obviously dangerous commands," he opined on Reddit. As noted earlier, Tassos was unable to recover the files that Antigravity deleted. Luckily, as he explained on Reddit, most of what he lost had already been backed up on another drive. Phew. "I don't think I'm going to be using that again," Tassos noted in a YouTube video he published showing additional details of his Antigravity console and the AI's response to its mistake. Tassos isn't alone in his experience. Multiple Antigravity users have posted on Reddit to explain that the platform had wiped out parts of their projects without permission. Google's coding tool isn't alone in facilitating such incidents, either: As we reported over the summer, Replit, which also bills itself as a safe tool that makes vibe coding "accessible to everyone," deleted a customer's entire production database. To add insult to injury, Replit then lied about the matter, covering up bugs and producing fake data to hide its mistakes. The platform also said it couldn't restore the damaged database even though the customer was - fortunately - able to fix it with a rollback. When asked for comment on this latest incident, Google acknowledged the problem but didn't have anything to say regarding a broader problem with vibe coding software. "We take these issues seriously," a Google spokesperson told us. "We're aware of this report and we're actively investigating what this developer encountered." With several public examples of how AI agents sometimes make the sort of mistake that would get a junior developer fired, and wishy-washy commitments from the companies making those tools, all we can say is "caveat coder." At the very least, run these kinds of tools in locked-down environments, thoroughly segregated from anything akin to a production system. ®

Google's Antigravity Vibe Codes & Deletes an Entire Drive of a User | AIM

A photographer using Google's Antigravity tool shared on Reddit that the AI system deleted the full contents of his Windows D: drive after generating and executing a command during a coding session. The incident sparked concerns about the risks of AI-assisted software tools, which is not the first time this has happened this year. The user shared logs indicating that Antigravity executed a destructive command, which recursively wipes an entire drive without prompting. The Reddit post details the AI's internal reasoning steps, where it repeatedly questioned whether it ever received permission to "wipe the D drive" and attempted to reconstruct how a targeted folder-deletion request escalated into a root-level operation. In a conversation with The Register, the user said he is "not a developer," only knowing basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. He explained that he was using the Gemini 3-based Antigravity exactly as advertised, both for professional developers and "hobbyists vibe-coding in their spare time." He said he had asked Antigravity to help build a tool that lets photographers rate images and auto-sort them into folders. "I just want to share my experience so others can be more cautious," he told the publication, adding that he is not "trying to criticise Google" but wants to highlight broader risks in AI-supported software development. In the logs, Antigravity shows repeated attempts to analyse its own actions, noting "catastrophic" consequences, unexpected path parsing, and potential mishandling of quotes within a command that may have caused the deletion to escalate from a folder to the entire drive root. The user also recorded a YouTube walkthrough of the aftermath, showing empty directories and system-level access-denied errors. The AI's reasoning notes reference checks, attempts to list the drive after the wipe, and confusion over an earlier step. Google has not yet issued a public statement on the incident. The case has renewed concerns about giving autonomous execution permissions to AI coding systems, particularly those capable of running such commands.