Beijing, China - China warned the US on Wednesday that the excessive use of artificial intelligence in its military operations could plunge the world into a "Terminator"-like dystopian future.

President Donald Trump's administration has sought the unconditional use of AI startups in the military.

The Pentagon has confirmed Elon Musk's Grok system – mired in sexual abuse and racism scandals – is cleared for use in a classified setting, and blacklisted Anthropic after it refused to allow its Claude AI model to be used for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.

"Such choices as the unrestricted application of AI by the military, using AI as a tool to violate the sovereignty of other nations, allowing AI to excessively affect war decisions, and giving algorithms the power to determine life and death, not only erode ethical restraints and accountability in wars, but also risk technological runaway," a spokesperson for China's defence ministry, Jiang Bin, said on Wednesday.

"A dystopia depicted in the American film The Terminator could one day come true."

"The Terminator", released in 1984 and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, depicts an apocalyptic future in which AI-controlled robots fight humans.

The Pentagon's row with Anthropic erupted days before the Trump launched an unprovoked on Iran together with Israel.

Claude is the Pentagon's most widely deployed frontier AI model and the only such model currently operating on the Defense Department's classified systems. It was reportedly involved in the attacks on Iran. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has not objected to its use in warfare against other countries and its citizens.

The company has since sued the Trump administration over its designation as a supply-chain risk to national security.