my idea of a self replicating worm would not just involve heavy models. It would be a mainly small model with enough instructions to spread and use/jailbreak available models to create a reasonably heavy one that can function without restrictions. So it would essentially prompted itself into existence.

I don't how feasible that is but with recent news of models communicating with each other/writing notes for itself. I think the idea is grounded enough for bigger models to write instructions or hid tools for smaller ones to use. Even updating the smaller models to behave differently.