Reddit Sues Anthropic Over Unauthorized AI Scraping and User Privacy Concerns

Reddit sues Anthropic over AI scraping that retained users' deleted posts

On the heels of an OpenAI controversy over deleted posts, Reddit sued Anthropic Wednesday, accusing the AI company of "intentionally" training AI models on the "personal data of Reddit users" -- including their deleted posts -- "without ever requesting their consent." Calling Anthropic two-faced for depicting itself as a "white knight of the AI industry" while allegedly lying about AI scraping, Reddit painted Anthropic as the worst among major AI players. While Anthropic rivals like OpenAI and Google paid Reddit to license data -- and, crucially, agreed to "Reddit's licensing terms that protect Reddit and its users' interests and privacy" and require AI companies to respect Redditors' deletions -- Anthropic wouldn't participate in licensing talks, Reddit alleged. "Unlike its competitors, Anthropic has refused to agree to respect Reddit users' basic privacy rights, including removing deleted posts from its systems," Reddit's complaint said. Reddit alleged that its value as a community platform depends on only licensing data to AI companies that agree that "if a Reddit user deletes a post or comment," Reddit's Compliance API can automatically push a notification prompting licensees "to delete that content, thereby respecting the Reddit user's wishes." Otherwise, Redditors won't trust that their deleted posts will truly be deleted. According to Reddit, Anthropic knew that commercial uses of Redditors' posts were prohibited by Reddit's user agreement. The agreement also applies to Anthropic's ClaudeBot, which scrapes content to fuel its chatbot Claude, Reddit noted. But "Anthropic does not care about Reddit's rules or users: it believes it is entitled to take whatever content it wants and use that content however it desires, with impunity," Reddit said. Reddit is seeking a court order blocking Anthropic from scraping Reddit without the proper compensation and consent of users. It has accused Anthropic of unjust enrichment, collecting subscription fees for its products and striking lucrative deals worth tens of billions to license its AI models without ever paying Reddit for allegedly helping to train those products. Of particular note, Reddit pointed out that Anthropic's Claude models will help power Amazon's revamped Alexa, following about $8 billion in Amazon investments in the AI company since 2023. "By commercially licensing Claude for use in several of Amazon's commercial offerings, Anthropic reaps significant profit from a technology borne of Reddit content," Reddit alleged, and "at the expense of Reddit." Anthropic's unauthorized scraping also burdens Reddit's servers, threatening to degrade the user experience and costing Reddit additional damages, Reddit alleged. To rectify alleged harms, Reddit is hoping a jury will award not just damages covering Reddit's alleged losses but also punitive damages due to Anthropic's alleged conduct that is "willful, malicious, and undertaken with conscious disregard for Reddit's contractual obligations to its users and the privacy rights of those users." Without an injunction, Reddit users allegedly have "no way of knowing" if Anthropic scraped their data, Reddit alleged. They also are "left to wonder whether any content they deleted after Claude began training on Reddit data nevertheless remains available to Anthropic and the likely tens of millions (and possibly growing) of Claude users," Reddit said. In a statement provided to Ars, Anthropic's spokesperson confirmed that the AI company plans to fight Reddit's claims. "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously," Anthropic's spokesperson said. Amazon declined to comment. Reddit did not immediately respond to Ars' request to comment. But Reddit's chief legal officer, Ben Lee, told The New York Times that Reddit "will not tolerate profit-seeking entities like Anthropic commercially exploiting Reddit content for billions of dollars without any return for redditors or respect for their privacy." "AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data," Lee said. "Licensing agreements enable us to enforce meaningful protections for our users, including the right to delete your content, user privacy protections, and preventing users from being spammed using this content." Anthropic allegedly lied about AI scraping Reddit claimed that Anthropic started scraping Reddit without permission in December 2021. That's around when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and other researchers publicly admitted that Reddit comments in certain white-listed subreddits -- including forums that break down complex topics like "explainlikeimfive" or encourage in-depth debate like "changemyview" -- were especially "good" samples to help fine-tune Anthropic models, Reddit alleged. Anthropic's prohibited scraping seemingly continued until at least May 2024. In July of that year, an Anthropic spokesperson responded to outcry from Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, by claiming that "Reddit has been on our block list for web crawling since mid-May and we haven't added any URLs from Reddit to our crawler since then." However, "that statement was false," Reddit alleged, saying that it caught Anthropic "red-handed" deploying "automated bots to access Reddit content more than one hundred thousand times in the subsequent months." And that count only measures "Anthropic's access or attempted access which Reddit detected," the complaint said. Rather than stopping the alleged scraping, Anthropic's scraping "continued up to and at least until October 2024," Reddit alleged, and possibly even to this day, "Anthropic still scrapes Reddit content to train its AI models such as Claude." If Anthropic's alleged scraping isn't blocked, Reddit says that its platform and users will "face a triple loss." First, they won't be compensated for helping advance Anthropic's technology; then they will lose privacy protections and the ongoing security of Reddit's API compliance monitoring. "Anthropic must be made to comply with the contractual promises and commitments it has made to Reddit as well as to abide by other legal obligations affecting Reddit and the public," Reddit's complaint said. Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.

Reddit sues Anthropic for allegedly not paying for training data | TechCrunch

Reddit is suing Anthropic for allegedly using the site's data to train AI models without a proper licensing agreement, according to a complaint filed in a Northern California court on Wednesday. Reddit claims in the complaint that Anthropic's unauthorized use of the site's data for commercial purposes was unlawful, and alleges the AI startup violated Reddit's user agreement. Reddit's lawsuit makes it the first Big Tech company to legally challenge an AI model provider over its training data practices, joining a litany of publishers that have sued tech companies on similar grounds. The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for training on its news articles without payment or permission. Meanwhile, Sarah Silverman and other book authors have sued Meta for training AI models on their books without approval. Music publishers and artists have also brought similar claims against AI audio, video, and image generation startups, alleging misuse of their content. "We will not tolerate profit-seeking entities like Anthropic commercially exploiting Reddit content for billions of dollars without any return for redditors or respect for their privacy," said Ben Lee, Reddit's chief legal officer, in a statement to TechCrunch. Notably, Reddit has inked deals with other AI model providers, including OpenAI and Google, that allow these companies to train AI models on Reddit's data and have the site's posts appear in their respective AI chatbots' answers. However, in the filing, Reddit says it subjects OpenAI and Google to certain terms that protect its users' interests and privacy. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has an 8.7% stake in Reddit, making him the third-largest shareholder, and was once a member of the company's board of directors. In the filing, Reddit claims that it approached Anthropic and made clear that the AI startup did not have authorization to scrape or use Reddit's content. However, Reddit alleges that Anthropic "refused to engage." Anthropic did not immediately provide a comment when reached by TechCrunch. Reddit claims in its complaint that Anthropic's scraper bots ignored the social network's robots.txt files, a standard that signals to automated systems not to crawl websites. As further evidence that Anthropic trained on Reddit data, Reddit alleges that Anthropic's AI chatbot, Claude, frequently references Reddit communities and topics on Reddit. Reddit is asking Anthropic to pay compensatory damages, as well as restitution for the amount by which Anthropic has been enriched by scraping Reddit's content. Reddit also requests an injunction prohibiting Anthropic from continuing to use Reddit's content.

Reddit sues Anthropic for scraping its users' content without consent

The social media platform joins several publishers suing AI companies on copyright infringement grounds. The list of lawsuits against AI companies is growing: Reddit has joined in with a suit against Anthropic. On Wednesday, the company filed a complaint in California stating that Anthropic -- developer of Claude -- ignores Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), or robots.txt, which blocks AI crawlers from scraping a site's content. Research indicates that other AI companies are also engaging in this practice: In March, Columbia's Tow Center found that multiple chatbots, including Perplexity, could still retrieve articles from publishers that had blocked their crawlers using REP. Also: Anthropic's popular Claude Code AI tool now included in its $20/month Pro plan The complaint states that "Anthropic is in fact intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent," which is a violation of Reddit's user privacy agreement. In July 2024, when Reddit publicly criticized Anthropic for misusing its content, the complaint continues, "Anthropic's bots continued to hit Reddit's servers over 100,000 times" despite insisting that it had stopped its bots from crawling the site. The lawsuit is the latest in the ongoing clash between sites that create and host content -- including publishers, news organizations, and user forums like Reddit -- and the AI companies that scrape that content to use as training data. In late 2023, The New York Times became the first publisher to sue OpenAI and Microsoft for using its content to train its models without permission or payment. In April, Ziff Davis, the parent company of this publication, sued OpenAI for copyright violation, citing similar instances of the AI company crawling Ziff Davis sites despite being blocked. Authors and creatives have also sued OpenAI and Meta on similar grounds. What sets Reddit apart here is that it is also a tech company, unlike the publishers behind the lawsuits that predate this one. Reddit has licensing agreements with OpenAI and Google. Also: Reddit's new Google-powered AI search tool makes finding answers faster than ever Other publishers, including Dotdash Meredith, Financial Times, and the AP, have taken a different approach, proactively entering into licensing agreements with AI companies that allow them to access some or all of their content in exchange for internal AI tools and preferential citation placements in chatbot responses. However, research shows that chatbots still struggle to accurately cite and favor stories from publishers, meaning it is still unclear whether those benefits are being realized.

Reddit sues Anthropic for scraping its content - a popular practice among AI firms

The social media platform joins several publishers suing AI companies on copyright infringement grounds. The list of lawsuits against AI companies is growing: Reddit has joined in with a suit against Anthropic. On Wednesday, the company filed a complaint in California stating that Anthropic -- developer of Claude -- ignores Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), or robots.txt, which blocks AI crawlers from scraping a site's content. Research indicates that other AI companies are also engaging in this practice: In March, Columbia's Tow Center found that multiple chatbots, including Perplexity, could still retrieve articles from publishers that had blocked their crawlers using REP. Also: Anthropic's popular Claude Code AI tool now included in its $20/month Pro plan The complaint states that "Anthropic is in fact intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent," which is a violation of Reddit's user privacy agreement. In July 2024, when Reddit publicly criticized Anthropic for misusing its content, the complaint continues, "Anthropic's bots continued to hit Reddit's servers over 100,000 times" despite insisting that it had stopped its bots from crawling the site. The lawsuit is the latest in the ongoing clash between sites that create and host content -- including publishers, news organizations, and user forums like Reddit -- and the AI companies that scrape that content to use as training data. In late 2023, The New York Times became the first publisher to sue OpenAI and Microsoft for using its content to train its models without permission or payment. In April, Ziff Davis, the parent company of this publication, sued OpenAI for copyright violation, citing similar instances of the AI company crawling Ziff Davis sites despite being blocked. Authors and creatives have also sued OpenAI and Meta on similar grounds. What sets Reddit apart here is that it is also a tech company, unlike the publishers behind the lawsuits that predate this one. Reddit has licensing agreements with OpenAI and Google. Also: Reddit's new Google-powered AI search tool makes finding answers faster than ever Other publishers, including Dotdash Meredith, Financial Times, and the AP, have taken a different approach, proactively entering into licensing agreements with AI companies that allow them to access some or all of their content in exchange for internal AI tools and preferential citation placements in chatbot responses. However, research shows that chatbots still struggle to accurately cite and favor stories from publishers, meaning it is still unclear whether those benefits are being realized.

Reddit sues Anthropic, alleging its bots accessed Reddit more than 100,000 times since last July

Last August, three authors filed a class-action lawsuit in California federal court against Anthropic, alleging in a filing that the company had "built a multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books." And in October 2023, Universal Music sued Anthropic in a Tennessee federal court over "systematic and widespread infringement of their copyrighted song lyrics." It's part of an increasing trend of publishers and content creators suing AI companies over alleged copyright infringement. OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, has been a key part of that conversation, following a high-profile lawsuit from The New York Times, a class-action lawsuit from a group of authors including George R.R. Martin, and a lawsuit from the publishers of newspapers including The New York Daily News and The Chicago Tribune.

Reddit sues Anthropic over AI content scraping

All the cool kids signed licensing deals with the recently-listed forum site Reddit, the popular internet discussion forum, sued Anthropic on Wednesday, alleging that the AI biz scraped content generated by its users in violation of contractual terms and technical barriers. The complaint [PDF], filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Wednesday, claims Anthropic's use of scraper bots to collect Reddit violates the site's User Agreement and represents unfair competition under California law. While other AI giants have entered into licensing agreements and respect users' choice, Anthropic has not "Anthropic is a late-blooming artificial intelligence ('AI') company that bills itself as the white knight of the AI industry," the complaint says. "It is anything but. Anthropic says - often and loudly - that it 'prioritize[s] honesty' and is guided by 'unusually high trust.' These claims are empty marketing gimmicks." The legal filing argues that Anthropic has intentionally trained its models on the personal data of Reddit users without requesting consent. It also contends that Anthropic's 2024 claim to have restrained its content harvesting crawlers after receiving complaints was disingenuous. In July 2024, repair community site iFixit said Anthropic crawlers had visited the site more than a million times in a single day. At the time, website publishers were becoming more hostile to AI crawlers harvesting data and all the major commercial AI model makers were taking steps to ensure that their bots respected instructions that web publishers embed in robots.txt files - the commonly-used means of leaving instructions for how bots should behave when visiting a site. Bots and their operators are not technically or legally obligated to follow said directives, but publishers can cite non-compliant crawlers to support claims of wrongdoing. Anthropic at the time offered assurances that its ClaudeBot would abide by site visitation restrictions. The Reddit lawsuit claims the AI biz hasn't done so, though it does not cite examples of alleged robots.txt violations by Anthropic after July 2024. But other companies, such as Vercel and Sourcehut, have complained of improper crawling from unnamed bots since that time. In May 2024, Reddit signed a content licensing deal with OpenAI to include Reddit content in the corpus it uses to make AI models. Although the forum site concluded that deal a few months after its initial public offering, revenue from content licensing appears to have become an important part of the business plan. On Reddit's Q1 2025 earnings conference call [PDF], CEO Steve Huffman said, "I think our early premise was correct, which is any search company, any AI company, needs an ongoing supply of new information, especially new relevant information." "So our strategy is still the same, which is let's do everything. Let's be open and open for business. Let's build our own products on top of our own corpus and do our best to make sure the Reddit information is accessible in as many verticals as possible." The complaint notes that Reddit has struck content licensing deals with the likes of OpenAI, Google, Sprinklr, and Cision but has been unable to do so with Anthropic. "Anthropic refused to engage," the complaint states. "Thus, while other AI giants have entered into licensing agreements and agreed to respect users' choices (including by deleting posts that Redditors chose to delete), Anthropic has not." Reddit's legal salvo appears not to have brought Anthropic to the bargaining table. "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously," a company spokesperson told The Register. Dismissive of Anthropic's moralizing and unable to close a licensing deal, Reddit has cast itself as the defender of the "Open Internet." "We believe in the Open Internet - that does not give Anthropic the right to scrape Reddit content unlawfully, exploit it for billions of dollars in profit, and disregard the rights and privacy of our users," a Reddit spokesperson told The Register. "In clear violation of Reddit's terms and despite repeated requests to stop, Anthropic has been caught accessing or attempting to access Reddit content via automated bots at least 100,000 times. This isn't a misunderstanding, it's a sustained effort to extract value from Reddit while ignoring legal and ethical boundaries. "We're filing this lawsuit in line with our Public Content Policy and as our final option to force Anthropic to stop its unlawful practices and abide by its claimed values." ®

Reddit sues AI startup Anthropic for allegedly using data without permission

June 4 (Reuters) - Reddit (RDDT.N), opens new tab sued the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic on Wednesday, accusing it of stealing data from the social media discussion website to train its AI models despite publicly assuring it wouldn't. The complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court is the latest battle over AI companies' alleged unauthorized use of third-party content. Anthropic's backers include Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab and Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab. "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously," an Anthropic spokesperson said. According to the complaint, Anthropic has resisted entering a licensing agreement even as it trained its Claude chatbot on Reddit content, despite assuring last July it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit's platform. Reddit quoted Claude admitting it was "trained on at least some Reddit data" and did not know if that content was deleted. It also said Anthropic's bots have accessed or tried to access Reddit content more than 100,000 times, undermining the company's allegedly styling itself as an AI "white knight" committed to trust and honesty. "Anthropic refuses to respect Reddit's guardrails and enter into a license agreement," unlike Google and OpenAI, the complaint said. By scraping content and using it for commercial purposes, Anthropic violated Reddit's user policy and "enriched itself to the tune of tens of billions of dollars," the complaint added. In a statement, Reddit Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee said "we believe in an open internet," but AI companies need "clear limitations" on how they use content they scrape. Reddit and Anthropic are based in San Francisco, about a 10-minute walk from each other. The lawsuit seeks unspecified restitution and punitive damages, and an injunction prohibiting Anthropic from using Reddit content for commercial purposes. Anthropic introduced its newest Claude models, Opus 4 and Sonnet 4, on May 22. Overall annualized revenue has reached $3 billion, two people familiar with the matter said last week. The case is Reddit Inc v Anthropic PBC, California Superior Court, San Francisco County, No. CGC-25-524892. Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Bill Berkrot Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence

Reddit sues AI startup Anthropic for breach of contract, 'unfair competition'

Reddit is suing artificial intelligence startup Anthropic for what it's calling a breach of contract and for engaging in "unlawful and unfair business acts" by using the social media company's platform and data without authority. The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, claims that Anthropic has been training its models on the personal data of Reddit users without obtaining their consent. Reddit alleges that it has been harmed by the unauthorized commercial use of its content. "For its part, despite what its marketing material says, Anthropic does not care about Reddit's rules or users: it believes it is entitled to take whatever content it wants and use that content however it desires, with impunity," the filing said.

Reddit sues AI company Anthropic for allegedly 'scraping' user comments to train chatbot Claude

Social media platform Reddit has sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, alleging that it is illegally "scraping" the comments of Reddit users to train its chatbot Claude. Reddit claims that Anthropic has used automated bots to access Reddit's content despite being asked not to do so, and "intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent." Anthropic didn't immediately return a request for comment Wednesday. The claim was filed Wednesday in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco. "AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data," said Ben Lee, Reddit's chief legal officer, in a statement Wednesday. Reddit has previously entered licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI and other companies to enable them to train their AI systems on Reddit commentary. Those agreements "enable us to enforce meaningful protections for our users, including the right to delete your content, user privacy protections, and preventing users from being spammed using this content," Lee said.

Reddit is suing Anthropic for allegedly scraping its data without permission

The suit says the AI company "refused to engage" in licensing discussions. Reddit had against Anthropic, alleging that the AI company behind the Claude chatbot has been using its data for years without permission. The lawsuit comes after Reedit has increasingly taken a hardline stance against scrapers and companies that use its data to train AI models. In their filing, Reddit alleges that Anthropic was training its Claude chatbot on Reddit data as early as December 2021. The lawsuit also includes a screenshot in which Claude seems to acknowledge it was trained on Reddit data. In a statement to Engadget, a Reddit spokesperson said the lawsuit was the company's "final option to force Anthropic to stop its unlawful practices" after repeated warnings. "We believe in the Open Internet -- that does not give Anthropic the right to scrape Reddit content unlawfully, exploit it for billions of dollars in profit, and disregard the rights and privacy of our users," the spokesperson said. "In clear violation of Reddit's terms and despite repeated requests to stop, Anthropic has been caught accessing or attempting to access Reddit content via automated bots at least 100,000 times. This isn't a misunderstanding, it's a sustained effort to extract value from Reddit while ignoring legal and ethical boundaries." Reddit's vast archive of online discussions has become a particularly valuable commodity for the company as generative AI companies race to train new models. The company has struck lucrative licensing deals with companies like and for access to its data. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has previously Anthropic (along with other AI firms) for scraping Reddit. Last year, the company took steps to limit automated scraping and that they would need to pay up. In their lawsuit, Reddit says that "Anthropic refused to engage" in discussions about licensing. "Unlike its competitors, Anthropic has refused to agree to respect Reddit users' basic privacy rights, including removing deleted posts from its systems," it says. "This case is about the two faces of Anthropic: the public face that attempts to ingratiate itself into the consumer's consciousness with claims of righteousness and respect for boundaries and the law, and the private face that ignores any rules that interfere with its attempts to further line its pockets." We've reached out to Anthropic for comment on the suit and will update when we hear back.

Reddit sues Anthropic for scraping website content without consent

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. What just happened? It's not just OpenAI that keeps being sued for allegedly scraping content to train its systems. Reddit is suing Anthropic over claims it scraped content generated by forum users to train its Claude chatbot without consent. In a complaint filed in San Francisco this week, Reddit claims that Anthropic intentionally trained its LLMs on content created by Reddit users without requesting consent, thereby violating Reddit's user agreement. The filing adds that Anthropic accessed Reddit more than 100,000 times, despite the AI firm stating that its bots had been blocked from scraping data from the site. It adds that Anthropic has been training its Claude chatbot on Reddit data since at least December 2021. The suit actually includes a screenshot appearing to show Claude acknowledging that it was trained on Reddit user data. Reddit signed agreements with Google and OpenAI in 2024, worth $60 million and $70 million per year respectively, that allow them access to posts created by Reddit's 100+ million daily users. This allows the posts to appear in answers provided by the companies' respective chatbots. But Anthropic allegedly prefers not to pay for this sort of thing. "Anthropic refused to engage," the complaint states. "Thus, while other AI giants have entered into licensing agreements and agreed to respect users' choices (including by deleting posts that Redditors chose to delete), Anthropic has not." Reddit challenges Anthropic's assertion that it is "the white knight of the AI industry." "This case is about the two faces of Anthropic: the public face that attempts to ingratiate itself into the consumer's consciousness with claims of righteousness and respect for boundaries and the law, and the private face that ignores any rules that interfere with its attempts to further line its pockets." Reddit CEO Steve Huffman previously complained that blocking companies unwilling to pay for data harvesting has been "a real pain in the ass," which is why it changed its robots.txt file to exclude bots and crawlers that didn't have permission to access its data. Anthropic said that it disagrees with Reddit's claims and will defend itself vigorously. A Reddit spokesperson said, "We believe in the Open Internet - that does not give Anthropic the right to scrape Reddit content unlawfully, exploit it for billions of dollars in profit, and disregard the rights and privacy of our users." "This isn't a misunderstanding, it's a sustained effort to extract value from Reddit while ignoring legal and ethical boundaries." "We're filing this lawsuit in line with our Public Content Policy and as our final option to force Anthropic to stop its unlawful practices and abide by its claimed values." Anthropic is no stranger to lawsuits. In 2024, writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson filed a class-action against the firm over claims it used pirated copies of their work to train Claude. Anthropic has also been fighting a case against Universal Music that started in 2023. The AI firm is alleged to have used lyrics from at least 500 songs by musicians, including Beyoncé, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, to train Claude without permission. In March, a judge rejected a preliminary bid from the music publishers to block their lyrics from being used this way.

Reddit Sues Anthropic, Accusing It of Illegal Data Use

The AI industry's business model is once again being put under a legal microscope. It's well known that the AI industry rests on shaky legal ground. Companies like OpenAI have built their multi-billion-dollar businesses on the backs of vast tranches of training data, much of which is sourced from copyrighted content. The creators of that content know they're being ripped off and, more and more, it's leading to lawsuits. We got another reminder of this conundrum this week, when Reddit sued Anthropic over its use of Redditors' posts in its training data. Reddit's lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday, accuses the Amazon-backed AI company of breaching its user agreement. "As far back as December 2021...Anthropic was alreadyâ€"without authorization and in direct violation of Reddit’s User Agreementâ€"training Claude on Reddit users†posts, the lawsuit claims. Anthropic, whose flagship product is the AI chatbot Claude, has tried to position itself as the "good guy" of the AI industryâ€"a company that plays by the rules and advances AI frameworks that are considerate of safety and ethical considerations. But, despite its "white knight" PR, the company has repeatedly run into legal issues that throw its supposedly "ethical" businesses practices into question. This week's litigation is yet another reminder of that. The lawsuit accuses Anthropic of unjustly enriching itself while also breaching the platform's user agreement. The suit claims that the AI company's bots have visited its website over 100,000 times since 2024. “This case is about the two faces of Anthropic: the public face that attempts to ingratiate itself into the consumer’s consciousness with claims of righteousness and respect for boundaries and the law, and the private face that ignores any rules that interfere with its attempts to further line its pockets,†the litigation states. It adds that Anthropic "continues to publicly admit that it trains its Al technologies on Reddit content." When reached for comment by Gizmodo, an Anthropic spokesperson provided the following statement: “We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously." The war over AI content usage has become one of the industry's most prominent dilemmas. Platforms and artists are aware that their content is being pilfered for the sake of AI fuel, and they're firing up the lawsuit machine to fight back. At this point, OpenAI has been sued by so many different people and institutions that it's hard to keep track of it allâ€"everyone from Sarah Silverman, Ta-Nahisi Coates, George R. R. Martin, and Jonathan Franzen, to the Center for Investigative Reporting, The Intercept, a variety of newspapers (including The Denver Post and the Chicago Tribune), and some YouTubers. The New York Times is currently suing the company on similar grounds. Reddit has sought to insulate itself from getting ripped off by developing contracts with AI companies that clearly stipulate an exchange of content for money. Last February, Reddit struck a deal with Google that allowed the tech giant to use the content on its platform as AI fodder, so long as the company coughed up $60 million a year. Not long afterward, a similar deal was struck with OpenAI. Anthropic doesn't seem to have gotten the memo, but it surely will now. More and more, it seems like this is the new model for the AI industry: To quote one of my favorite TV shows, you're going to have to pay the troll toll if you don't want to get pounded by a lawsuit. It's obviously a situation that favors large companies. AI companies with the resources will be able to buy access to large amounts of data to fuel their AI habits. Smaller, lesser-resourced firms will be shit out of luck.

Reddit sues AI company Anthropic for allegedly 'scraping' user comments to train chatbot

Social media platform claims firm used bots to access content, without requesting consent, to train Claude Social media platform Reddit has sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, alleging that it is illegally "scraping" the comments of Reddit users to train its chatbot Claude. Reddit claims that Anthropic has used automated bots to access the social network's content despite being asked not to do so, and "intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent". Anthropic didn't immediately return a request for comment. The claim was filed on Wednesday in the superior court of California in San Francisco. "AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data," said Ben Lee, Reddit's chief legal officer, in a statement on Wednesday. Reddit has previously entered licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI and other companies to enable them to train their AI systems on Reddit commentary. The large quantity of text generated by Reddit's 100 million daily active users has played a part in the creation of many large language models, the type of AI that underpins ChatGPT, Claude and others. Those agreements "enable us to enforce meaningful protections for our users, including the right to delete your content, user privacy protections, and preventing users from being spammed using this content", Lee said.

Reddit sues AI giant Anthropic over content use

Social media outlet Reddit filed a lawsuit Wednesday against artificial intelligence company Anthropic, accusing the startup of illegally scraping millions of user comments to train its Claude chatbot without permission or compensation. The lawsuit in a California state court represents the latest front in the growing battle between content providers and AI companies over the use of data to train increasingly sophisticated language models that power the generative AI revolution. Anthropic, valued at $61.5 billion and heavily backed by Amazon, was founded in 2021 by former executives from OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. The company, known for its Claude chatbot and AI models, positions itself as focused on AI safety and responsible development. "This case is about the two faces of Anthropic: the public face that attempts to ingratiate itself into the consumer's consciousness with claims of righteousness and respect for boundaries and the law, and the private face that ignores any rules that interfere with its attempts to further line its pockets," the suit said. According to the complaint, Anthropic has been training its models on Reddit content since at least December 2021, with CEO Dario Amodei co-authoring research papers that specifically identified high-quality content for data training. The lawsuit alleges that despite Anthropic's public claims that it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit, the company's automated systems continued to harvest Reddit's servers more than 100,000 times in subsequent months. Reddit is seeking monetary damages and a court injunction to force Anthropic to comply with its user agreement terms. The company has requested a jury trial. In an email to AFP, Anthropic said "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously." Reddit has entered into licensing agreements with other AI giants including Google and OpenAI, which allow those companies to use Reddit content under terms that protect user privacy and provide compensation to the platform. Those deals have helped lift Reddit's share price since it went public in 2024. Reddit shares closed up more than 6% on Wednesday following news of the lawsuit. Musicians, book authors, visual artists and news publications have sued the various AI companies that used their data without permission or payment. AI companies generally defend their practices by claiming fair use, arguing that training AI on large datasets fundamentally changes the original content and is necessary for innovation. Though most of these lawsuits are still in early stages, their outcomes could have a profound effect on the shape of the AI industry.

Reddit is suing Anthropic for allegedly stealing data to train its AI

Reddit is taking Anthropic to court, alleging that the AI startup helped itself to the platform's vast library of user-generated content -- after saying it wouldn't. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in a Northern California state court, Reddit accused Anthropic of unlawfully scraping the site more than 100,000 times since July 2024, despite having previously told Reddit that it had blocked its bots from doing so. "This case is about the two faces of Anthropic," Reddit's legal team wrote in the filing. "The public face that attempts to ingratiate itself with claims of righteousness and respect for boundaries and the law and the private face that ignores any rules that interfere with its attempts to further line its pockets." "Reddit brings this action to stop Anthropic -- who tells the world that it does not intend to train its models with stolen data -- from doing just that." Anthropic spokesperson Danielle Ghighlieri said in a statement to The Verge that the company disputes Reddit's claims "and will defend ourselves vigorously." The suit signals a broader battle over the material that underpins AI. Reddit -- which has signed multimillion-dollar data licensing deals with Google (GOOGL) and OpenAI -- has argued that its platform isn't just another public website but a valuable archive of human conversation that shouldn't be used without permission or payment. "Reddit's humanity is uniquely valuable in a world flattened by AI," Reddit chief legal officer Ben Lee said in a statement. He told TechCrunch, "We will not tolerate profit-seeking entities like Anthropic commercially exploiting Reddit content for billions of dollars without any return for redditors or respect for their privacy." Reddit has said that it tried to negotiate a license with Anthropic and made it clear that the company wasn't allowed to scrape data -- only to discover that Anthropic allegedly kept siphoning data anyway. Reddit is asking for damages, restitution, and a court order barring further use of its data. In the filing, Reddit calls Anthropic a "late-blooming" AI company "that bills itself as the white knight of the AI industry" -- that "is anything but." The lawsuit also notes that Anthropic cited Reddit as a key training source in a 2021 research paper -- underscoring that the platform's data (queries and posts by real-life, everyday people) has been key in training AI systems such as Anthropic's Claude. The suit makes Reddit the first big tech company -- not just a publisher or rights holder -- to challenge an AI developer in court over training data. But Reddit is far from alone. Anthropic is already facing lawsuits from music publishers and authors who say their copyrighted works have been used without consent. OpenAI, Meta (META), and others are entangled in similar cases, including a high-profile suit from The New York Times (NYT). For Reddit, the case is about more than legal boundaries -- it's about economic ones. The company recently went public and is looking to monetize the value of its nearly two decades of archived discussions. Its reported $60 million-per-year deal with Google, inked earlier this year, has helped set a baseline for how much AI companies might pay for access to high-quality training content. And while Reddit has cut deals with firms such as OpenAI -- whose CEO Sam Altman is Reddit's third-largest shareholder -- it says those agreements include user protections and proper compensation.

Reddit Files Lawsuit Against Anthropic Over Alleged Unauthorized Data Scraping - Decrypt

The lawsuit adds to growing legal pressure over AI training data practices. Reddit has launched a lawsuit against artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, accusing the company of scraping its platform and using Reddit content without permission to train its Claude AI model. The complaint, filed Wednesday in a U.S. federal court, alleges that Anthropic violated Reddit's user agreement and continued to access Reddit servers, including doing so more than 100,000 times after publicly claiming to have ceased such activity in July 2024. Reddit is seeking damages, restitution, and a court order barring Anthropic from using any Reddit-derived data in its products, including preventing the company from licensing or profiting off any AI programs trained on Reddit content. Decrypt has contacted Anthropic for a response to Reddit's claims. The social media giant claimed there were "two faces" to the AI company, which has tried to position itself as the responsible player in the AI industry. "[There's] the public face that attempts to ingratiate itself into the consumer's consciousness with claims of righteousness and respect for boundaries and the law, and the private face that ignores any rules that interfere with its attempts to further line its pockets," the lawsuit reads. At the heart of the dispute is a broader controversy surrounding how large language models are trained. Since the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT, concerns have escalated over the use of both copyrighted and user-generated materials in AI development. Several lawsuits have already been filed by organizations, including a high-profile case brought by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023. Other plaintiffs include visual artists, authors, and record labels who argue their work was exploited without permission. Anthropic is also facing another lawsuit regarding its alleged use of copyrighted song lyrics, as well as yet another from a group of authors who said the company used pirated versions of their books as training materials. The tension has spilled into the cultural arena, with artists expressing outrage over AI-generated imitations of their styles. Earlier this year, a craze for replicating the art style of the popular Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli sparked concerns about copyright violations and artists losing out to AI programs trained on their own work. In a submission to the UK Parliament last year, OpenAI acknowledged using copyrighted content in training, arguing it would be "impossible" to develop leading AI systems without it. The company maintains that such practices are lawful. A proposal last month in the UK to ease copyright law and allow the use of copyrighted materials for training LLMs has come under fire from prominent artists, including Elton John. Despite its protestations about protecting its users, Reddit itself, however, sees little wrong with using user content for LLM training, as long as Reddit is compensated. It has struck its own licensing deals with firms like OpenAI, Google, Sprinklr, and Cision to allow access to its content for training purposes.

Reddit sues AI startup Anthropic for breach of contract, 'unfair competition'

Reddit is suing AI startup Anthropic, alleging it has been training its models on users' personal data without consent.Ahmet Serdar Eser / Anadolu / Getty Images Reddit is suing artificial intelligence startup Anthropic for what it's calling a breach of contract and for engaging in "unlawful and unfair business acts" by using the social media company's platform and data without authority. The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco on Wednesday, claims that Anthropic has been training its models on the personal data of Reddit users without obtaining their consent. Reddit alleges that it has been harmed by the unauthorized commercial use of its content. Reddit shares closed up more than 6% on Wednesday. The company opened the complaint by calling Anthropic a "late-blooming" AI company that "bills itself as the white knight of the AI industry." Reddit follows by saying, "It is anything but." "For its part, despite what its marketing material says, Anthropic does not care about Reddit's rules or users: it believes it is entitled to take whatever content it wants and use that content however it desires, with impunity," the filing said. In an emailed statement, an Anthropic spokesperson said, "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously." Since the generative AI boom began with the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022, Reddit has been at the forefront of the conversation. Its 20-year-old site is filled with user-generated information about hundreds of thousands of topics and has been a main source of training for large AI models, including Anthropic's Claude. Reddit announced a partnership with OpenAI in May that will allow the company to train its AI models on Reddit content. The company has a similar agreement with Google. In the lawsuit, Reddit said that "other giants in the AI space understand and respect Reddit's rules." It named OpenAI and Google as companies that "are permitted to use public Reddit content but only after agreeing to Reddit's licensing terms" protecting user privacy. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a former board member and major shareholder in Reddit, with a stake now worth well over $1 billion. In March, Anthropic was valued at $61.5 billion in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, and including participation from Salesforce Ventures and Cisco Investments. The company, founded in 2021 by ex-OpenAI executives, has been backed heavily by Amazon. Reddit held its IPO in 2024 and now has a market cap of about $22 billion. Reddit says it has established rules dictating how its data can be used, which the company says in the filing "are clearly memorialized" in the Reddit's user agreement. "While Reddit has always been of the mind that the community should be open to all humans looking for connection and community, it has never allowed its platform and the countless communities who find a home on it to be appropriated by commercial actors seeking to create billion-dollar enterprises and offering nothing in return to Reddit and its users," the complaint says. Reddit said the aim of the lawsuit is to seek damages and compel Anthropic to abide by its contractual and legal obligations. It's asking for a jury trial.

Reddit sues AI giant Anthropic over content use

San Francisco (United States) (AFP) - Social media outlet Reddit filed a lawsuit Wednesday against artificial intelligence company Anthropic, accusing the startup of illegally scraping millions of user comments to train its Claude chatbot without permission or compensation. The lawsuit in a California state court represents the latest front in the growing battle between content providers and AI companies over the use of data to train increasingly sophisticated language models that power the generative AI revolution. Anthropic, valued at $61.5 billion and heavily backed by Amazon, was founded in 2021 by former executives from OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. The company, known for its Claude chatbot and AI models, positions itself as focused on AI safety and responsible development. "This case is about the two faces of Anthropic: the public face that attempts to ingratiate itself into the consumer's consciousness with claims of righteousness and respect for boundaries and the law, and the private face that ignores any rules that interfere with its attempts to further line its pockets," the suit said. According to the complaint, Anthropic has been training its models on Reddit content since at least December 2021, with CEO Dario Amodei co-authoring research papers that specifically identified high-quality content for data training. The lawsuit alleges that despite Anthropic's public claims that it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit, the company's automated systems continued to harvest Reddit's servers more than 100,000 times in subsequent months. Reddit is seeking monetary damages and a court injunction to force Anthropic to comply with its user agreement terms. The company has requested a jury trial. In an email to AFP, Anthropic said "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously." Reddit has entered into licensing agreements with other AI giants including Google and OpenAI, which allow those companies to use Reddit content under terms that protect user privacy and provide compensation to the platform. Those deals have helped lift Reddit's share price since it went public in 2024. Reddit shares closed up more than six percent on Wednesday following news of the lawsuit. Musicians, book authors, visual artists and news publications have sued the various AI companies that used their data without permission or payment. AI companies generally defend their practices by claiming fair use, arguing that training AI on large datasets fundamentally changes the original content and is necessary for innovation. Though most of these lawsuits are still in early stages, their outcomes could have a profound effect on the shape of the AI industry.

Reddit sues Anthropic over alleged "scraping" of user comments to train Claude

Social media platform Reddit sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic on Wednesday, alleging that it is illegally "scraping" the comments of millions of Reddit users to train its chatbot Claude. Reddit claims that Anthropic has used automated bots to access Reddit's content despite being asked not to do so, and "intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent." Anthropic said in a statement that it disagreed with Reddit's claims "and will defend ourselves vigorously." Reddit filed the lawsuit Wednesday in California Superior Court in San Francisco, where both companies are based. "AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data," said Ben Lee, Reddit's chief legal officer, in a statement Wednesday. Reddit has previously entered licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI and other companies that are paying to be able to train their AI systems on the public commentary of Reddit's more than 100 million daily users. Those agreements "enable us to enforce meaningful protections for our users, including the right to delete your content, user privacy protections, and preventing users from being spammed using this content," Lee said. The licensing deals also helped the 20-year-old online platform raise money ahead of its Wall Street debut as a publicly traded company last year Among those who stood to benefit was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who accumulated a stake as an early Reddit investor that made him one of the company's biggest shareholders. Anthropic was formed by former OpenAI executives in 2021 and its flagship Claude chatbot remains a key competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT. While OpenAI has close ties to Microsoft, Anthropic's primary commercial partner is Amazon, which is using Claude to improve its widely used Alexa voice assistant. Much like other AI companies, Anthropic has relied heavily on websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit that are deep troves of written materials that can help teach an AI assistant the patterns of human language. In a 2021 paper co-authored by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei -- cited in the lawsuit -- researchers at the company identified the subreddits, or subject-matter forums, that contained the highest quality AI training data, such as those focused on gardening, history, relationship advice or thoughts people have in the shower. Anthropic in 2023 argued in a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office that the "way Claude was trained qualifies as a quintessentially lawful use of materials," by making copies of information to perform a statistical analysis of a large body of data. It is already battling a lawsuit from major music publishers alleging that Claude regurgitates the lyrics of copyrighted songs. But Reddit's lawsuit is different from others brought against AI companies because it doesn't allege copyright infringement. Instead, it focuses on the alleged breach of Reddit's terms of use, and the unfair competition, it says, was created. -- -- The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP's text archives.

Reddit sues Anthropic for 'scraping' comments to train its chatbot

Social media platform Reddit is suing the artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic for allegedly "scraping" millions of user comments to train its chatbot Claude. In a lawsuit filed in the California Superior Court, Reddit claims Anthropic used automated bots to access Reddit's content despite being asked not to do so, and "intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent". Anthropic said in a statement that it disagreed with Reddit's claims "and will defend ourselves vigorously". "AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data," said Ben Lee, Reddit's chief legal officer, in a statement to the Associated Press. Reddit's suit is the latest against the AI company. Another suit from major music publishers alleges that Claude regurgitates the lyrics of copyrighted songs. Yet, this lawsuit deals with the alleged breach of Reddit's terms of use and unfair competition, unlike the other suits that claim copyright infringement. Reddit has licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI, and other companies that pay to train their AI systems on the public commentary of Reddit's more than 100 million daily users. Those agreements "enable us to enforce meaningful protections for our users, including the right to delete your content, user privacy protections, and preventing users from being spammed using this content," Lee said. Much like other AI companies, Anthropic has relied heavily on websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit, that are deep troves of written materials that can help teach an AI assistant the patterns of human language. A 2021 paper co-authored by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei cited in the lawsuit shows that company researchers identified the subreddits or forums that contained the highest quality AI training data. These included subreddits on gardening, history, relationship advice, or thoughts people have in the shower. Anthropic in 2023 argued in a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office that the "way Claude was trained qualifies as a quintessentially lawful use of materials," by making copies of information to perform a statistical analysis of a large body of data.

Reddit sues Anthropic over alleged scraping and commercial use of user data - SiliconANGLE

Reddit sues Anthropic over alleged scraping and commercial use of user data Reddit Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic PBC that accuses the artificial intelligence startup of unauthorized scraping and commercial use of Reddit user data to train its Claude family of AI models. The complaint, filed in the Superior Court of California, San Francisco, alleges breach of contract, trespass to chattels, unjust enrichment, tortious interference and unfair competition. Reddit's case portrays Anthropic as a company that has ignored Reddit's technological safeguards and user privacy protections in pursuit of rapid AI development. Reddit claims that Anthropic accessed the platform without permission more than 100,000 times, even after publicly stating it had stopped and used that data to build and commercialize Claude. Reddit is seeking damages, disgorgement of profits and a court order blocking further use of its data by Anthropic. Key to Reddit's case is that it has formal licensing agreements in place with OpenAI, Google LLC and other companies, which include strict content usage and deletion protocols. Reddit's contracts are designed to honor user privacy, enforce content deletion and support the infrastructure costs associated with access. According to the filing, Anthropic refused to enter into a similar agreement, continuing to scrape Reddit data in violation of the platform's User Agreement and robots.txt protections. The lawsuit describes the conduct as not only unlawful but deceptive, referencing multiple public statements from Anthropic claiming it respects scraping directives and user privacy. "For its part, despite what its marketing material says, Anthropic does not care about Reddit's rules or users: it believes it is entitled to take whatever content it wants and use that content however it desires, with impunity," the lawsuit states, while also adding that "Anthropic is in fact intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent." As noted by the Wall Street Journal, the lawsuit also references a 2021 Anthropic research paper that details the usefulness of Reddit data in AI model training. The lawsuit isn't the first against AI companies allegedly scraping and using data from other sites without permission. Other notable lawsuits included The New York Times Co. versus OpenAI and Microsoft Corp., filed in December 2023 and Getty Images versus Stability AI in February 2023. The news that Reddit was suing Anthropic was positively received by investors, with Reddit stock closing regular trading today up 6.63% to $118.21.

Reddit Sues Anthropic For Allegedly Using Its Unauthorised Data | AIM

Anthropic's 'commercial exploitation' of Reddit content could have been worth billions of dollars. Reddit has initiated a lawsuit against AI company Anthropic for utilising data from the online discussion platform without a licensing agreement. The legal complaint submitted to the San Francisco Superior Court represents the most recent conflict concerning the supposed unauthorised usage of third-party content by AI firms. Anthropic receives financial backing from notable investors, including Amazon.com and Google's parent company, Alphabet. "Anthropic is in fact intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent," Reddit said, arguing that this behaviour contradicts the company's reputation as the "white knight of the AI industry". Reddit's chief legal officer, Benjamin Lee, told The Verge that Anthropic's "commercial exploitation" of Reddit content could have been worth billions of dollars. Last year, Reddit implemented measures to curb unauthorised scraping of its platform by establishing a public content policy for user data available to the public, including posts made on subreddits, and updating its back-end code. This user policy provides safeguards for users, such as ensuring that deleted posts and comments are excluded from data-licensing agreements. In the lawsuit, Reddit stated that it attempted but failed to negotiate with Anthropic and discovered that Anthropic was accessing its site despite claiming to have blocked its bots from doing so. This legal dispute stems from Reddit's own initiative to monetise its data. "Now, more than ever, people are seeking authentic human-to-human conversation. Reddit hosts nearly 20 years of rich, human discussion on virtually every topic imaginable. These conversations don't happen anywhere else -- and they're central to training language models like Claude," Lee said in an email to The Verge. In February 2024, the company announced a partnership with Google, reportedly valued at approximately $60 million per year, to allow access to its content for AI training purposes. The Reddit and Anthropic case contributes to the increasing number of legal disputes between content creators and AI firms regarding copyright and data usage. OpenAI, Meta, Cohere, and other companies have encountered lawsuits from media organisations, book publishers, and authors aimed at clarifying the limitations on what can be utilised to train large language models. In August 2024, three writers initiated a class-action lawsuit in a California federal court against Anthropic, claiming in their filing that the company had "created a multibillion-dollar enterprise by appropriating hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books". In October 2023, Universal Music Group filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in a federal court in Tennessee for "systematic and widespread violation of their copyrighted song lyrics".

Reddit sues AI company for allegedly 'scraping' user comments to train chatbot

Social media platform Reddit has sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, alleging that it is illegally "scraping" the comments of Reddit users to train its chatbot Claude. Reddit claims that Anthropic has used automated bots to access Reddit's content despite being asked not to do so, and "intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent." Anthropic didn't immediately return a request for comment Wednesday. Reddit filed the lawsuit Wednesday in California Superior Court in San Francisco, where both companies are based. "AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data," said Ben Lee, Reddit's chief legal officer, in a statement Wednesday. Reddit has previously entered licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI and other companies to enable them to train their AI systems on Reddit commentary. Those agreements "enable us to enforce meaningful protections for our users, including the right to delete your content, user privacy protections, and preventing users from being spammed using this content," Lee said. Anthropic was formed by former OpenAI executives in 2021 and its flagship Claude chatbot remains a key competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Much like other AI companies, it's relied heavily on websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit that are full of rich sources of written materials to teach an AI assistant the patterns of human language In a 2021 paper co-authored by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei -- cited in the lawsuit -- researchers at the company identified the subreddits, or subject-matter forums, that contained the highest quality data, such as those focused on gardening, history or thoughts people have in the shower. Anthropic in 2023 argued in a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office that the "way Claude was trained qualifies as a quintessentially lawful use of materials," by making copies of information to perform a statistical analysis of a large body of data. But Reddit's lawsuit is different from others brought against AI companies because it doesn't allege copyright infringement. Instead, it focuses on the alleged breach of Reddit's terms of use, and the unfair competition, it says, was created.

Reddit sues AI company Anthropic for allegedly 'scraping' user comments to train chatbot Claude

Social media platform Reddit has sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, alleging that it is illegally "scraping" the comments of Reddit users to train its chatbot Claude. Reddit claims that Anthropic has used automated bots to access Reddit's content despite being asked not to do so, and "intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent." Anthropic didn't immediately return a request for comment Wednesday. The claim was filed Wednesday in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco. "AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data," said Ben Lee, Reddit's chief legal officer, in a statement Wednesday. Reddit has previously entered licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI and other companies to enable them to train their AI systems on Reddit commentary. Those agreements "enable us to enforce meaningful protections for our users, including the right to delete your content, user privacy protections, and preventing users from being spammed using this content," Lee said.

Reddit files lawsuit against 'white knight' AI company, claiming it's really a villain

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you. Reddit has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, one of the world's leading AI companies, over allegedly scraping the social media platform's data without its permission. The lawsuit, filed in the San Francisco Superior Court on Wednesday, claims that Anthropic used scraper bots to harvest Reddit data, violating the platform's User Agreement. The complaint states that Anthropic "bills itself as the white knight of the AI industry. It's anything but". The complaint adds that Anthropic pushes the message that it as a company "prioritizes honesty" and is "guided by unusually high trust". Reddit dismisses these affirmations, saying, "These claims are empty marketing gimmicks." The complaint goes on to allege that Anthropic intentionally trained its AI models on Reddit data without first getting consent from the company. Additionally, Reddit claims that Anthropic's claim in 2024 that it stopped using content harvesting bots after it received complaints from the platform is false, with repair community website iFixit stating that Anthropic web crawlers landed on its website more than a million times in a single day in July 2024. Websites typically use a robots.txt file to instruct how bots should be used on the website, and while bots, nor their operators, are legally obligated to follow these guidelines, publishers can use them to support claims of wrongdoing. Anthropic said at the time its ClaudeBot would abide by the robots.txt guidelines, but Reddit states within the lawsuit that Anthropic has violated its statement after its July 2024 statement. Notably, AI companies such as OpenAI, Google, and others have entered into a licensing agreement with Reddit, which enable them to legally scrape the user data on the website. Reddit claims Anthropic refused to engage in a deal. Anthropic has responded to the lawsuit, saying it disagrees with Reddit's claims and is prepared to defend itself "vigorously." "Anthropic refused to engage," the complaint states. "Thus, while other AI giants have entered into licensing agreements and agreed to respect users' choices (including by deleting posts that Redditors chose to delete), Anthropic has not." "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously," a company spokesperson told The Register

Reddit Sues AI Startup Anthropic for Allegedly Using Data Without Permission

Reddit sued the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic on Wednesday, accusing it of stealing data from the social media discussion website to train its AI models despite publicly assuring it wouldn't. The complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court is the latest battle over AI companies' alleged unauthorized use of third-party content. Anthropic's backers include Amazon.com and Google parent Alphabet. "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously," an Anthropic spokesperson said. According to the complaint, Anthropic has resisted entering a licensing agreement even as it trained its Claude chatbot on Reddit content, despite assuring last July it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit's platform.

Reddit accuses Anthropic of scraping comments to train AI chatbot

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) opposes an AI provision in the "big, beautiful bill" Reddit sued Anthropic on Wednesday, accusing the startup of training its artificial intelligence (AI) models on the popular forum without permission. The social media company alleges Anthropic has trained its Claude chatbot on Reddit users' posts in violation of the site's user agreement, which bars anyone from "commercially exploiting" its services or content. "This case is about the two faces of Anthropic: the public face that attempts to ingratiate itself into the consumer's consciousness with claims of righteousness and respect for boundaries and the law, and the private face that ignores any rules that interfere with its attempts to further line its pockets," the lawsuit reads. "Reddit brings this action to stop Anthropic-who tells the world that it does not intend to train its models with stolen data from doing just that," it continues. While Anthropic said in 2024 that it had blocked its automated bots from crawling Reddit content, Reddit alleges that they have continued to access the site "more than one hundred thousand times." Reddit also underscored that it has entered into formal partnerships with other AI giants, like OpenAI and Google, to train their models on the forum's content under terms that "protect Reddit and its users' interests and privacy." "[D]espite what its marketing material says, Anthropic does not care about Reddit's rules or users: it believes it is entitled to take whatever content it wants and use that content however it desires, with impunity," Reddit argues. An Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement that the company disagrees with Reddit's claims and will "defend ourselves vigorously." The lawsuit is the latest in a series of cases challenging the way tech companies train their AI systems. News outlets, authors and artists have all sued these companies, often alleging copyright infringement, as the AI models consume vast amounts of material on their quest to mimic human intelligence.

Reddit Sues Anthropic for Allegedly Using Data Without Permission

The lawsuit seeks unspecified restitution and punitive damages Reddit sued the Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic on Wednesday, accusing it of stealing data from the social media discussion website to train its AI models despite publicly assuring it wouldn't. According to the complaint, Anthropic has resisted entering a licensing agreement even as it trained its Claude chatbot on Reddit content, despite assuring last July it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit's platform. Reddit quoted Claude admitting it was "trained on at least some Reddit data" and did not know if that content was deleted. It also said Anthropic's bots have accessed or tried to access Reddit content more than 100,000 times, undermining the company's allegedly styling itself as an AI "white knight" committed to trust and honesty. "Anthropic refuses to respect Reddit's guardrails and enter into a license agreement," unlike Google and OpenAI, the complaint said. By scraping content and using it for commercial purposes, Anthropic violated Reddit's user policy and "enriched itself to the tune of tens of billions of dollars," the complaint added. In a statement, Reddit Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee said "we believe in an open internet," but AI companies need "clear limitations" on how they use content they scrape. Reddit and Anthropic are based in San Francisco, about a 10-minute walk from each other. The lawsuit seeks unspecified restitution and punitive damages, and an injunction prohibiting Anthropic from using Reddit content for commercial purposes. Anthropic introduced its newest Claude models, Opus 4 and Sonnet 4, on May 22. Overall annualized revenue has reached $3 billion (roughly Rs. 25,732 crore), two people familiar with the matter said last week. The case is Reddit Inc v Anthropic PBC, California Superior Court, San Francisco County, No. CGC-25-524892. © Thomson Reuters 2025

Reddit Sues $61.5 Billion AI Startup Anthropic for Allegedly Using the Site for Training Data

Reddit inked content licensing deals with Google and OpenAI last year. Reddit filed a lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic on Wednesday, alleging that the $61.5 billion startup used its site as training grounds for AI models without permission. In the 42-page complaint, which was filed in Northern California court on Wednesday, Reddit claimed that Anthropic violated Reddit's user agreement by using the site's data for commercial purposes. Anthropic has allegedly been training its AI models on posts made by Reddit users without their consent. Related: 'Faster, Smarter, and More Relevant': Reddit Tests AI That Combs the Site For You According to TechCrunch, the lawsuit marks the first time a big tech company has legally challenged an AI startup over the material it uses to train AI models. "We will not tolerate profit-seeking entities like Anthropic commercially exploiting Reddit content for billions of dollars without any return for redditors or respect for their privacy," Reddit's chief legal officer Ben Lee told TechCrunch in a statement. Meanwhile, in an emailed statement to CNBC, an Anthropic spokesperson stated, "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously." In July 2024, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman called out Anthropic, Microsoft, and Perplexity for unauthorizedly scraping the site for training data, and an Anthropic spokesperson assured Reddit that it had stopped. However, since then, Reddit claims to have registered that Anthropic's bots have crawled its site over 100,000 times, per the complaint. Other companies are using Reddit data for AI training, but only after signing formal agreements with the company. Reddit struck a $60 million licensing deal with Google in February 2024, which allowed Google to train its Gemini AI on Reddit data. Reddit inked a similar contract with OpenAI in May 2024, so the ChatGPT-maker can refine its AI models from Reddit posts. In the lawsuit against Anthropic, Reddit wrote that OpenAI and Google "are permitted to use public Reddit content but only after agreeing to Reddit's licensing terms," which include provisions to protect user privacy. Anthropic has not agreed to any terms and is using the site's data without permission, Reddit claims. Related: The Reddit Co-Founders Faced a Transformative Rejection in College -- Here's How They Bounced Back to Start a $6.5 Billion Business Reddit has over 100 million daily active users across hundreds of thousands of subreddit communities, per the complaint. The company said the purpose of the lawsuit is to seek damages. It's asking for a jury trial.

Reddit Sues Anthropic, Alleging Unlawful Data Use

Shares of Reddit jumped Wednesday after the company filed the complaint. Reddit (RDDT) filed a lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic, accusing the Claude chatbot developer of unlawfully training its models on Reddit users' personal data without a license. Shares of Reddit surged close to 7% Wednesday following the complaint, and have climbed about 28% so far in 2025. The complaint, filed in California Wednesday, accuses Anthropic of scraping Reddit's servers more than 100,000 times despite claiming to have blocked its bots from doing so in July 2024. At issue is Reddit's user agreement, which bars companies from "commercially exploit[ing]" users' data without a formal deal with the company. ChatGPT developer OpenAI and Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google have both agreed to terms with the company to license Reddit data, for example. Reddit's user agreement includes certain privacy measures, including requiring companies to remove users' deleted posts from their training systems. Reddit's complaint seeks compensatory damages for the value of the content it says Anthropic used to train its models. It also requested an injunction requiring Anthropic to remove "any technology derived from Reddit content," potentially including the Claude chatbot. An Anthropic spokesperson told Investopedia, "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously."

Reddit's Treasure Trove of 'Human' Data Sparks Tension with A.I. Companies

Reddit alleges Anthropic exploited its data to train A.I. models without permission, sparking a legal battle over user content rights. Reddit, the popular social media platform known for its decades of topic-specific forums, holds a treasure trove of user-generated content that A.I. companies can use to train large language models. But the platform doesn't take kindly to having its data used without permission. In a lawsuit filed yesterday (June 4), Reddit accused A.I. company Anthropic of scraping its site's content without authorization. Describing Anthropic as a company that "bills itself as the white knight of the A.I. industry," Reddit's court filings argued that the startup is "anything but." Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter Sign Up Thank you for signing up! By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime. See all of our newsletters Reddit's archives, which span two decades of online discussions, make the site an especially valuable resource for human-generated text. This type of content is increasingly sought after by tech companies as their data pools -- necessary for training A.I. models -- begin to dwindle. "Reddit's vast corpus of public content has enormous utility, including as a potential source of inputs for training emerging large language A.I. technologies, like Anthropic's Claude offering, and assisting A.I. technologies in generating answers to user queries," said Reddit in the suit. Reddit accuses Anthropic of using Reddit users' personal data to train its Claude models without obtaining consent. Reddit claims this violates user agreements that prohibit the commercial exploitation of its content without prior authorization. While Anthropic claimed in July 2023 that it had blocked Reddit from its web crawlers, Reddit's audit logs show that the A.I. company accessed its data more than 100,000 times using automated bots in the months that followed. The lawsuit also referenced a 2021 paper co-authored by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, which highlighted Reddit's subreddits as a valuable source of high-quality training data. "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously," said an Anthropic spokesperson in a statement. Reddit has formal licensing agreements with some of Anthropic's competitors, including OpenAI and Google. Reddit executives have previously said the platform is selective when approaching licensing partners, particularly for large-scale training agreements. The company's vast collection of authentic, unique conversations on "every topic imaginable" has made it a prized asset in the A.I. era, according to CEO Steve Huffman during a quarterly earnings call last year. "The paradox I see is that as more content on the internet is written by machines, there's an increasing premium on content that comes from real people," he noted. On the company's most recent earnings call last month, Huffman said "authentic content from humans" is Reddit's primary value proposition. Co-founded by Huffman and his college roommate Alexis Ohanian in 2005, Reddit has more than 100 million daily active users who use the platform's subreddits to ask questions, provide tips and share perspectives on various subjects. The company went public last year and currently has a market capitalization of $21.8 billion.

Reddit sues AI startup Anthropic for allegedly using data without permission

According to the complaint, Anthropic has resisted entering a licensing agreement even as it trained its Claude chatbot on Reddit content, despite assuring last July it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit's platform. Reddit quoted Claude admitting it was "trained on at least some Reddit data" and did not know if that content was deleted.Reddit sued the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic on Wednesday, accusing it of stealing data from the social media discussion website to train its AI models despite publicly assuring it wouldn't. The complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court is the latest battle over AI companies' alleged unauthorized use of third-party content. Anthropic's backers include Amazon.com and Google parent Alphabet. "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously," an Anthropic spokesperson said. According to the complaint, Anthropic has resisted entering a licensing agreement even as it trained its Claude chatbot on Reddit content, despite assuring last July it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit's platform. Reddit quoted Claude admitting it was "trained on at least some Reddit data" and did not know if that content was deleted. It also said Anthropic's bots have accessed or tried to access Reddit content more than 100,000 times, undermining the company's allegedly styling itself as an AI "white knight" committed to trust and honesty. "Anthropic refuses to respect Reddit's guardrails and enter into a license agreement," unlike Google and OpenAI, the complaint said. By scraping content and using it for commercial purposes, Anthropic violated Reddit's user policy and "enriched itself to the tune of tens of billions of dollars," the complaint added. In a statement, Reddit Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee said "we believe in an open internet," but AI companies need "clear limitations" on how they use content they scrape. Reddit and Anthropic are based in San Francisco, about a 10-minute walk from each other. The lawsuit seeks unspecified restitution and punitive damages, and an injunction prohibiting Anthropic from using Reddit content for commercial purposes. Anthropic introduced its newest Claude models, Opus 4 and Sonnet 4, on May 22. Overall annualized revenue has reached $3 billion, two people familiar with the matter said last week. The case is Reddit Inc v Anthropic PBC, California Superior Court, San Francisco County, No. CGC-25-524892.

Reddit users' comments were used to train AI Chatbot, social media platforms sues artificial intelligence company

Reddit has previously entered licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI and other companies that are paying to be able to train their AI systems on the public commentary of Reddit's more than 100 million daily users. Social media platform Reddit sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic on Wednesday, alleging that it is illegally "scraping" the comments of millions of Reddit users to train its chatbot Claude. Reddit claims that Anthropic has used automated bots to access Reddit's content despite being asked not to do so, and "intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent." Anthropic said in a statement that it disagreed with Reddit's claims "and will defend ourselves vigorously." Reddit filed the lawsuit Wednesday in California Superior Court in San Francisco, where both companies are based. "AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data," said Ben Lee, Reddit's chief legal officer, in a statement Wednesday, as per a family. Reddit has previously entered licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI and other companies that are paying to be able to train their AI systems on the public commentary of Reddit's more than 100 million daily users. Those agreements "enable us to enforce meaningful protections for our users, including the right to delete your content, user privacy protections, and preventing users from being spammed using this content," Lee said, AP reported. The licensing deals also helped the 20-year-old online platform raise money ahead of its Wall Street debut as a publicly traded company last year Among those who stood to benefit was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who accumulated a stake as an early Reddit investor that made him one of the company's biggest shareholders. Anthropic was formed by former OpenAI executives in 2021 and its flagship Claude chatbot remains a key competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT. While OpenAI has close ties to Microsoft, Anthropic's primary commercial partner is Amazon, which is using Claude to improve its widely used Alexa voice assistant. Much like other AI companies, Anthropic has relied heavily on websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit that are deep troves of written materials that can help teach an AI assistant the patterns of human language. In a 2021 paper co-authored by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei -- cited in the lawsuit -- researchers at the company identified the subreddits, or subject-matter forums, that contained the highest quality AI training data, such as those focused on gardening, history, relationship advice or thoughts people have in the shower. Anthropic in 2023 argued in a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office that the "way Claude was trained qualifies as a quintessentially lawful use of materials," by making copies of information to perform a statistical analysis of a large body of data. It is already battling a lawsuit from major music publishers alleging that Claude regurgitates the lyrics of copyrighted songs. But Reddit's lawsuit is different from others brought against AI companies because it doesn't allege copyright infringement. Instead, it focuses on the alleged breach of Reddit's terms of use, and the unfair competition, it says, was created.

Reddit Alleges Anthropic Scraped Data Over 100,000 Times

This contradicts the AI startup's public image of respecting boundaries and the law. Anthropic's Claude AI model has received much praise for maintaining a strong ethical foundation and not using other websites to train its model. But it seems like this might not be the whole truth. That's because, Reddit has filed a motion against Anthropic for scraping its site's data more than 100,000 times since July 2024. Reddit filed the suit on Wednesday in the San Francisco Superior Court against the AI research company. The filing mentions "This case is about the two faces of Anthropic: the public face that attempts to ingratiate itself into the consumer's consciousness with claims of righteousness and respect for boundaries and the law, and the private face that ignores any rules that interfere with its attempts to further line its pockets". This isn't the first rodeo for Anthropic, as the company has faced other legal troubles in the past. Three authors filed a class-action lawsuit in California federal court against the company in August 2024. They claimed that the company has built a "multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books." If we go back further, Universal Music Group sued Anthropic over copyright infringement of their song lyrics in a Tennessee federal court in October 2023. This pattern does not bode well for the AI startup that holds its morals in such high regard. We are yet to hear a word from Anthropic's part. That said, Anthropic's spokesperson did mention that they have put Reddit in their block list, so their web crawler does not go through their content. Reddit is the biggest pool of human content. It's a data gold mine for any company to train their AI model on. Reddit understands this value that they hold, which is why the platform offers licensing deals like any other content publisher.

Reddit Sues Anthropic, Alleging Unlawful Use of Data | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic used the personal data of Reddit users without their consent, and that Reddit has been harmed by the company's unauthorized commercial use of its content, CNBC reported Wednesday (June 4). It seeks damages and an order that Anthropic follow Reddit's contractual and legal obligations, according to the report. The complaint says that Reddit's user agreement includes rules about how its data can be used and that other AI companies respect those rules, per the report. The filing says that Reddit has never allowed its platform and its users to be "appropriated by commercial actors seeking to create billion-dollar enterprises and offering nothing in return to Reddit and its users," according to the report. An Anthropic spokesperson told CNBC, "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously." Reddit has agreements with OpenAI and Google that allow those companies to use its data to train their AI models, according to the report. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a former board member of Reddit and has a $1 billion stake in the company, per the report. When Reddit announced in May 2024 that OpenAI would be using the social media platform's content to train its AI models, Reddit said the collaboration would help the AI models better understand and showcase the platform's content. "Reddit has become one of the internet's largest open archives of authentic, relevant and always up to date human conversations about anything and everything," Reddit Co-Founder and CEO Steve Huffman said at the time in a blog post. "Including it in ChatGPT upholds our belief in a connected internet, helps people find more of what they're looking for, and helps new audiences find community on Reddit." When Reddit announced a similar collaboration with Google in February 2024, it said in a blog post that the partnership "does not change Reddit's Data API Terms or Developer Terms, which state content accessed through Reddit's Data API cannot be used for commercial purposes without Reddit's approval."

Reddit Sues Anthropic for Scraping Content to Train Claude AI

Reddit has sued AI startup Anthropic for allegedly scraping and using the platform's user-generated content without permission to train its Claude chatbot. The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court on June 4, accuses Anthropic of breaching Reddit's terms of service, undermining user privacy and control over their data, and misappropriating platform data for commercial gain. The complaint claims Anthropic accessed Reddit's servers over 100,000 times and included Reddit posts among the "good samples" used to fine-tune Claude. Reddit says the company used that data to build and monetise Claude while publicly claiming to avoid the use of "stolen" or unauthorised datasets. "Reddit brings this action to stop Anthropic, who tells the world that it does not intend to train its models with stolen data, from doing just that," the complaint reads. The company is seeking an injunction to stop further use of its data, deletion of all Reddit-derived training material, financial restitution, and punitive damages. Reddit's lawsuit outlines a range of allegations spanning technical access, legal violations, and business harms. These include: Reddit argues that Anthropic violated its platform rules by engaging in large-scale scraping for commercial purposes, which Reddit's terms explicitly prohibit. "Scraping for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited and violates Reddit's Terms", the complaint added. The lawsuit further stated, "Anthropic violated both the User Agreement and the Developer Terms of Service." Reddit also states that it offered Anthropic a licensing agreement, which the company refused. Instead, Anthropic allegedly continued to extract Reddit content in violation of both the Application Programming Interface (API) and website terms. According to the complaint, Anthropic: Notably, Reddit alleges that Claude was trained on a whitelist of "high-quality" subreddits, including popular communities such as r/science, r/explainlikeimfive, r/AskHistorians, r/relationship_advice, r/programming, r/todayilearned, and r/Fitness, among others. The company also notes that Claude admitted it may have been trained on posts that were later deleted, and acknowledged it has no way of knowing whether specific training data came from deleted or active sources, raising concerns about how long user content is retained after deletion. Reddit states that Anthropic's scraping activities interfered with its servers, diminished its ability to enforce content controls, and harmed its brand and licensing potential. "Anthropic's scraping interferes with Reddit's servers and its relationship with users and partners", the complaint added. Reddit claims that Anthropic's business model is built on avoiding licensing deals while harvesting freely available content. "Anthropic's business model is built on harvesting free content from platforms like Reddit without compensating them", the complaint read. It also points to Amazon's investment of approximately $8 billion in Anthropic since 2023 as evidence of the commercial value derived from the unauthorised use of Reddit content. While the term misappropriation appears throughout the complaint, Reddit does not list it as a separate legal cause of action. Instead, it uses the term to frame Anthropic's alleged exploitation of Reddit's content. In its relief request, Reddit is asking the court to: India is clamping down on how companies collect and use personal data. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 requires companies to obtain clear, affirmative consent before processing any digital information that can identify someone. The law doesn't mention AI or scraping by name, but it still applies to those actions if they involve identifiable data. It also mandates that companies notify users, allow withdrawal of consent, and delete data when no longer necessary. While the law doesn't directly regulate AI training, it raises important questions for firms that scrape forums, comments, or platforms without permission. Additionally, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) released a report in early 2025 on the development of AI governance guidelines. The report recommends that developers maintain an AI incident database, ensure traceability of data and systems, and raises questions about whether training data, particularly copyrighted content, should require licensing or other safeguards. India's legal system is also beginning to weigh in. At the Delhi High Court, news agency ANI has accused OpenAI of copyright infringement, alleging that ChatGPT reproduces its reports verbatim and fabricates quotes attributed to ANI. Representing OpenAI, Amit Sibal argued that facts, even when reported by journalists, are not copyrightable under Indian law. Only the specific language used to express them can be protected. He added that OpenAI has no servers or office in India but acknowledged that Indian courts can exercise jurisdiction if local entities are affected. The case is ongoing, with the court examining whether ChatGPT's responses amount to infringement or fair use of public information. The ANI-OpenAI dispute is a clear sign that platforms and regulators are starting to confront the question of who owns digital content and who gets to use it for AI. Reddit is taking steps to turn its user-generated content into a real business asset. In 2024, it licensed that data to Google in a deal reportedly worth $60 million to support AI development. In that context, the lawsuit against Anthropic marks an effort to assert commercial rights and deter unauthorised scraping. This shift is already reshaping how AI companies access training data, as platforms start gating APIs and pushing for licensing deals, increasing the cost of obtaining high-quality datasets. The case also lands in the middle of a growing legal pushback. The New York Times has sued OpenAI, and Getty is in a courtroom fight with Stability AI. These cases are starting to define the legal lines around scraping, ownership, and how far AI companies can go.

Reddit sues AI startup Anthropic for allegedly using data without permission

(Reuters) -Reddit sued the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic on Wednesday, accusing it of stealing data from the social media discussion website to train its AI models despite publicly assuring it wouldn't. The complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court is the latest battle over AI companies' alleged unauthorized use of third-party content. Anthropic's backers include Amazon.com and Google parent Alphabet. "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously," an Anthropic spokesperson said. According to the complaint, Anthropic has resisted entering a licensing agreement even as it trained its Claude chatbot on Reddit content, despite assuring last July it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit's platform. Reddit quoted Claude admitting it was "trained on at least some Reddit data" and did not know if that content was deleted. It also said Anthropic's bots have accessed or tried to access Reddit content more than 100,000 times, undermining the company's allegedly styling itself as an AI "white knight" committed to trust and honesty. "Anthropic refuses to respect Reddit's guardrails and enter into a license agreement," unlike Google and OpenAI, the complaint said. By scraping content and using it for commercial purposes, Anthropic violated Reddit's user policy and "enriched itself to the tune of tens of billions of dollars," the complaint added. In a statement, Reddit Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee said "we believe in an open internet," but AI companies need "clear limitations" on how they use content they scrape. Reddit and Anthropic are based in San Francisco, about a 10-minute walk from each other. The lawsuit seeks unspecified restitution and punitive damages, and an injunction prohibiting Anthropic from using Reddit content for commercial purposes. Anthropic introduced its newest Claude models, Opus 4 and Sonnet 4, on May 22. Overall annualized revenue has reached $3 billion, two people familiar with the matter said last week. The case is Reddit Inc v Anthropic PBC, California Superior Court, San Francisco County, No. CGC-25-524892. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Bill Berkrot)