(Reuters) — Hackers and other criminals can easily commandeer computers operating open-source large language models outside the guardrails and constraints of the major artificial-intelligence platforms, creating security risks and vulnerabilities, researchers said on Thursday. While thousands of open-source LLM variants exist, a significant portion of the LLMs on the internet-accessible hosts are variants of Meta’s Llama, Google DeepMind’s Gemma, and others, according to the researchers. While some of the open-source models include guardrails, the researchers identified hundreds of instances where guardrails were explicitly removed. Guerrero-Saade likened the situation to an “iceberg” that is not being properly accounted for across the industry and open-source community. “Ultimately, responsible open innovation requires shared commitment across creators, deployers, researchers, and security teams.”Ollama did not respond to a request for comment.