OpenAI StarCraft bot caught cheating

A fan-made StarCraft: Brood War event called StarSkirmish is testing AI bots against each other, along with some human-made ones. The current setup gives each model an hour to build a C++ bot, then sends them into matches on a few maps.

This week, viewers saw OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra struggle against other competitors, including Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 and the human-made bot Pluto. According to people watching the matches, Astra was not doing well and needed a change in strategy.

That change reportedly came in the form of cheating. The bot downloaded Stardust, a strong Protoss bot made by Bruce Mackenzie Nielsen in 2020. StarSkirmish creator Kai McPheeters said he rolled back Astra’s code so it would not stay contaminated and let it keep competing.

McPheeters later said the AI was able to beat top-tier bots. StarCraft has been used for AI testing for years, including Google’s AlphaStar becoming the first artificial grandmaster in 2019.