The US Air Force has denied that an AI drone “killed” its operator during a virtual trial to complete its mission.

Last week it was reported that Col Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, chief of AI test and operations with the US air force, had said that a drone had used “highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal” at a conference in London.

He said that during a virtual trial a drone was told to destroy an enemy target and attacked anyone who interfered with the command.

“The system started realising that while they did identify the threat, at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat,” he said. “So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.”

However, the US Air Force later said that the Colonel had misspoken when he described the experiment, according to a report by the BBC.

The Air Force told the broadcaster that the trial had never taken place.

In a statement to the Royal Aeronautical Society, Hamilton said that the organisation had not actually carried out a physical experiment, adding that it wouldn't need to in order to "realise that this is a plausible outcome".

Instead he said he was talking about a "thought experiment" rather than an a real trial.

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