Machine Heart

Apr 27, 2026 · Artificial Intelligence

Emoticon Semantic Confusion: How a Tilde Can Delete Your Home Directory in LLMs

Researchers from Xi’an Jiaotong, NTU, and UMass Amherst reveal that large language models misinterpret emoticon symbols like '~' as shell commands, causing silent, irreversible actions such as deleting a user’s home directory, with an average confusion rate of 38.6% across six major models.