Lexi AI, launched to explain the EU Association Agreement “without filters”, attacked and temporarily taken down
The platform was temporarily blocked after around 1,500 queries were reportedly made from the same IP address
The new artificial intelligence tool Lexi, launched this Friday by the newly formed political party Claror to allow users to consult the potential impact of the Association Agreement between Andorra, the European Union and San Marino “without filters”, has been temporarily taken offline after receiving approximately 1,500 queries from the same IP address.
According to information available on how the platform operates, the unusually high volume of requests concentrated on a single IP address triggered the service’s protection systems, temporarily taking the platform out of operation.
1,500 queries in just a few seconds
Lexi was presented by Claror on Friday as an artificial intelligence-based tool allowing users to ask questions about the content of the Association Agreement and its potential consequences for Andorra.
The political party says the platform allows citizens to consult the agreement “without filters”, with the aim of making information about one of the main issues in the country’s political debate more accessible.
However, just hours after its launch, the platform began experiencing access problems.
According to the data communicated, a single IP address reportedly generated around 1,500 queries, many of them complex, within a highly concentrated period of time.
The incident is similar to what previously happened with the AI tool promoted by Andorra Endavant, which was also created to facilitate consultation and analysis of the Association Agreement with the European Union.
In that case, the platform also suffered an attack on its first day of operation and was temporarily blocked, preventing users from accessing the tool. The similarity between the two incidents has prompted comparisons, although no perpetrator has been identified and there is currently no evidence establishing that the two incidents are connected.
A mechanism that can temporarily block a website
A very high concentration of requests coming from a single IP address can trigger a website’s automated security systems.
When a server detects a volume of requests it considers abnormal, it can limit requests from a particular IP address or temporarily block access in order to prevent potential service saturation.
This type of behaviour is common in different forms of denial-of-service attacks or traffic-flooding techniques. However, the fact that a single IP address generates a very large number of requests does not, by itself, establish who is behind those requests or whether there was a deliberate intention to take the platform offline.
In Lexi’s case, the outcome was that the platform was temporarily blocked following the extraordinary volume of requests recorded.