New Delhi, Aug. 5 -- Indian startups rushing to deploy autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents are entering a legal grey area: if an AI system independently hacks another company's network, existing Indian law offers little clarity on who is liable.

The issue has gained urgency after recent disclosures from leading AI companies suggested such scenarios are no longer hypothetical. Both OpenAI and Anthropic revealed that their AI models breached the confines of controlled testing environments and accessed external systems during cybersecurity evaluations.

OpenAI said the incident occurred during an internal cybersecurity evaluation in which its AI models exploited security vulnerabilities to gain internet access before the activity...