Reddit had filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging that the AI company behind the Claude chatbot has been using its data for years without permission.
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.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has previously called out Anthropic (along with other AI firms) for scraping Reddit.
In their lawsuit, Reddit says that “Anthropic refused to engage” in discussions about licensing.
Anthropic, the AI company that created the Claude chatbot, was sued by Reddit for allegedly using its data without authorization for years. The lawsuit follows Reedit’s growingly harsh stance against companies and scrapers that use its data to train artificial intelligence models.
Reddit claims in its filing that as early as December 2021, Anthropic was using Reddit data to train its Claude chatbot. Claude appears to admit in a screenshot included in the lawsuit that it was trained using Reddit data. Following several warnings, a Reddit representative told Engadget that the lawsuit was the company’s “last option to force Anthropic to stop its unlawful practices.”.
“We believe in the Open Internet—that does not give Anthropic the right to illegally scrape Reddit content, leverage it for billions of dollars in profit, and disregard our users’ rights and privacy,” the spokesperson stated. Anthropic has been found to have accessed or attempted to access Reddit content at least 100,000 times using automated bots, in flagrant violation of Reddit’s terms and in spite of repeated requests to cease. This is not a misinterpretation; rather, it is a persistent attempt to take advantage of Reddit while disregarding moral and legal restrictions. “.”.
Given the competition among generative AI companies to train new models, Reddit’s extensive collection of online discussions has become a particularly valuable asset for the company. For access to its data, the business has reached profitable licensing agreements with businesses like Google and OpenAI. In the past, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has criticized Anthropic and other AI companies for stealing content from Reddit. The business took action to restrict automated scraping last year and issued a warning to AI firms that they would have to pay.
According to Reddit’s lawsuit, “Anthropic refused to engage” in licensing negotiations. It claims that, in contrast to its rivals, Anthropic has not consented to uphold the fundamental privacy rights of Reddit users, including clearing out deleted posts from its systems. “The two sides of Anthropic are at issue in this case: the public face, which tries to win over customers with claims of morality and adherence to the law and boundaries, and the private face, which disregards any regulations that stand in the way of its efforts to increase its profits. “.”.
“We will vigorously defend ourselves against Reddit’s claims,” an Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement. “,”.
