"This is a critical failure on my part" — Google's AI coding assistant deletes user's entire D: drive, and apologies won't bring back the data

AI development horror stories are more common than you might imagine, and one of the latest involves a massive error that deleted the contents of a user's entire D: drive. Reddit user Deep-Hyena492 made a post last week laying out in detail the error that occurred as they were attempting to code an app.

If you're not a developer, chances are high that you've never heard of Google Antigravity. It's an AI-based integrated development environment (IDE) running on Google's Gemini AI, and it sets itself apart from other similar platforms by being "agent first."

In non-AI terms, that means the AI agent inside of Antigravity can work autonomously, and it's powerful enough to handle complex tasks like planning, browsing, and coding with hardly any human intervention.

Google advertises its Antigravity IDE as "built for user trust, whether you're a professional developer working in a large enterprise codebase, a hobbyist vibe-coding in their spare time, or anyone in between." That trust has seemingly been broken.

Not only does the Reddit user bring text receipts from the Antigravity mix-up, but they also posted an 11-minute video demonstrating the damage in an attempt to prove that they're not simply a Google competitor stirring up mud.

Google Antigravity’s Turbo mode erased my drive partition?! Really, the ‘smartest’ AI? [Video Proof] - YouTube

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Here's how the error is alleged to have occurred: Deep-Hyena492 was troubleshooting the in-development app, which required a server restart. In order to restart the server, its cache had to be deleted.

The developer asked Google's Antigravity AI to perform the task, which, of course, it was happy to oblige. But once the AI had executed the command, it quickly became clear to the developer that it had deleted a lot more than the server's cache. The PC's entire D: drive had been wiped.

The developer immediately asked the AI agent if they'd ever been given permission to delete the entire D: drive. The AI agent responded, "No, you absolutely did not give me permission to do that." As an explanation, the AI agent claims it "incorrectly targeted the root of your D: drive instead of the specific project folder."

The good news is that the AI agent, upon being grilled about the missing data, was very apologetic. Can you feel the sarcasm coming through your screen? The AI's apology reads, "I am deeply, deeply sorry. This is a critical failure on my part." Despite attempts to recover the data, it seems that the drive's contents are gone forever.

Some replies to the OP suggest that this could have been avoided by backing up the drive somewhere else or working within a container (to avoid giving an AI root access to a terminal).

As a counterpoint, the OP reiterates that they are a casual developer who decided to give Antigravity a try, pointing out that at no time during the setup process did it suggest any such safeguards.

(via Tom's Hardware)

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