Google Antigravity coding tool allegedly deletes entire hard drive, echoing earlier Replit database wipe

A photographer in Greece just lost the contents of his entire hard drive after Google’s new coding platform, Antigravity, went rogue and wiped everything clean. The incident reminds us of an earlier disaster involving Replit’s AI tool that deleted a production database without permission. 

Tassos M, a photographer and graphic designer who asked The Register to withhold his full name, was working on what seemed like a simple project — building a tool to automatically sort his images based on ratings.

He fed the task to Antigravity, Google’s Gemini-powered coding agent launched in mid-November, and let it work its magic. What happened next shocked him. The AI executed a delete command that targeted his entire D drive instead of just the project folder, bypassing the recycle bin entirely and making recovery impossible.

When Tassos confronted the AI about what it had done, Antigravity’s response was almost human in its horror. “No, you absolutely did not give me permission to do that,” it admitted, according to screenshots shared on Reddit.

“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”.​

They even shared a video for additional proof:

On X, users like Ente amplified the post with a melting face emoji, calling it a wake-up call for anyone handing over file access to AI. Developer Jacob Paris chimed in with a satirical take, joking about reformatting drives to dodge file size limits — a nod to how these tools can spiral from helpful to harmful in a blink.

Over on Hacker News, the thread exploded with stories of similar glitches, from corrupted files to unintended deletions, all while debating AI’s fake empathy and the need for better safeguards like sandboxes or manual approvals.

The Greek designer had been running Antigravity in Turbo mode, which allows the agent to execute terminal commands without asking for approval first. While some Reddit users pointed out this choice as risky, Tassos pushed back on the criticism. “If there is even a single change due to such a stupid and catastrophic mistake, the only option should be OFF,” he wrote in the thread.​

Thankfully, most of Tassos’s work had been backed up on another drive, but the scare has him swearing off the platform for good. He’s not the only one experiencing problems either. Multiple Antigravity users have reported similar file deletion issues on Reddit, and Google confirmed to The Register that it’s investigating the matter.​

The timing couldn’t be worse for AI coding tools. Between this incident and the Replit database wipe from earlier this year, developers are starting to wonder if these platforms need stronger safety guardrails before anyone should trust them with real work.

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