Amazon Reportedly Recommends Explosive-Producing Ingredients as 'Frequently Bought Together' Items for Chemicals

Laws on record for this risk area

Policy angle: Classified under Malicious Actors & Misuse (Cyberattacks, weapon development or use, and mass harm) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 5 instruments on record cover this risk area.

• India DPDP Act India · Partially applicable · binding
• Law on Artificial Intelligence (2025) Kazakhstan · Adopted · binding
• Law No. 132/2025 on artificial intelligence Italy · In force · binding
• EU AI Act European Union · Partially applicable · binding
• Texas Responsible AI Governance Act (TRAIGA) Texas (United States) · In force · binding

Matched from the record's risk category and country to the instruments in effect recorded here: a law listed covers the area, which is not a finding that it applies to this incident. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).

News reports (2)

Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.

1. 18 Sep 2017
   Potentially deadly bomb ingredients are ‘frequently bought together’ on Amazon

   channel4.com · Siobhan Kennedy
2. 18 Sep 2017
   Amazon's algorithm reportedly suggests shoppers purchase items that can be used to create dangerous reactions and explosives in the 'frequently bought together' section

   businessinsider.com · Kate Taylor

Who was involved

Alleged deployer

Amazon

Alleged developer

Amazon

Alleged harmed party

Amazon Users

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Risk domain

Malicious Actors & Misuse

Risk subdomain

4.2 Cyberattacks, weapon development or use, and mass harm

Causal entity

AI

Intent

Unintentional

Timing

Post-deployment

Harm level

none

Sectors

wholesale and retail trade

Countries

—

Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.2.

• Business operations/infrastructure damage

  "Business operations/infrastructure damage - Damage, disruption, or destruction of a business system and/or its components due to malfunction, cyberattacks, etc."

  A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

• Violence/armed conflict

  "Violence/armed conflict - Use or misuse of a technology system to incite, facilitate or conduct cyberattacks, security breaches, lethal, biological and chemical weapons development, resulting in violence and armed confl...

  A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

• Security & Defense

  "AI could enable more serious incidents to occur by lowering the cost of devising cyber-attacks and enabling more targeted incidents. The same programming error or hacker attack could be replicated on numerous machines....

  The Rise of Artificial Intelligence - Future Outlooks and Emerging Risks (Allianz2018)

• Catastrophic risk due to autonomous weapons programmed with dangerous targets

  "AI could enable autonomous vehicles, such as drones, to be utilized as weapons. Such threats are often underestimated."

  The Rise of Artificial Intelligence - Future Outlooks and Emerging Risks (Allianz2018)

• Hazardous Biological and Chemical Technologies

  "AI systems such as LLMs, chemical LLMs (Skinnider et al., 2021; Moret et al., 2023), and other LLM- based biological design tools might soon facilitate the production of bioweapons, chemical weapons, and other hazardous...

  Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

• Warfare and Physical Harm

  "The use of AI in warfare is highly alarming and may pose dangers to human safety (Hendrycks et al., 2023). Autonomous drone warfare is being aggressively pursued as a tactic in the current war in Ukraine (Meaker, 2023),...

  Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

• Dual use science risks

  "General- purpose AI systems could accelerate advances in a range of scientific endeavours, from training new scientists to enabling faster research workflows. While these capabilities could have numerous beneficial appl...

  International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI (Bengio2024)

• Cyber offence

  "General- purpose AI systems could uplift the cyber expertise of individuals, making it easier for malicious users to conduct effective cyber- attacks, as well as providing a tool that can be used in cyber defence. Gener...

  International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI (Bengio2024)

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

• 1 Dec 2025Anthropic's Claude Was Reportedly Jailbroken To Allegedly Help Steal Sensitive Mexican Government Data
• 10 Oct 2025OpenAI ChatGPT Models Reportedly Jailbroken to Provide Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear Weapons Instructions
• 27 Aug 2025Anthropic Reportedly Identifies AI Misuse in Extortion Campaigns, North Korean IT Schemes, and Ransomware Sales
• 10 Jul 2025LAMEHUG Malware Reportedly Integrates Large Language Model for Real-Time Command Generation in a Purported APT28-Linked Cyberattack
• 5 Jun 2025Reported AI-Aided Development of Explosive Devices by Long Island Resident Michael Gann
• 17 May 2025AI Chatbot Allegedly Used to Research Explosive Materials in Palm Springs Fertility Clinic Bombing

Other incidents involving Amazon

• 8 Apr 2023Amazon Algorithmic Pricing Allegedly Hiked up Price of Reference Book to Millions
• 4 Feb 2022Amazon Reportedly Sold Products and Recommended Frequently Bought Together Items That Aid Suicide Attempts
• 26 Dec 2021Alexa Recommended Dangerous TikTok Challenge to Ten-Year-Old Girl
• 20 Sep 2021Amazon's AI Cameras Incorrectly Penalized Delivery Drivers for Mistakes They Did Not Make
• 15 Mar 2021Amazon's Monitoring System Allegedly Pushed Delivery Drivers to Prioritize Speed over Safety, Leading to Crash
• 2 Mar 2021Amazon Allegedly Forced Deployment of AI-Powered Cameras on Delivery Drivers