Key Takeaways
- Reddit has filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Anthropic.
- The core of the complaint is that Anthropic allegedly scraped Reddit’s user-generated content without permission to train its AI models.
- Reddit argues this action breaches its user agreement, infringes on user privacy, and represents unfair competition.
- Anthropic disputes Reddit’s claims and intends to defend itself vigorously in court.
Popular online discussion platform Reddit is taking legal action against AI firm Anthropic. The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, claims Anthropic improperly used automated “bots” to collect vast amounts of content created by Reddit users.
Reddit alleges this data harvesting was done to train Anthropic’s AI models, directly violating Reddit’s terms of service and California’s unfair competition laws. The complaint suggests Anthropic’s proclaimed commitment to “honesty” and “high trust” is merely “empty marketing.”
The legal papers argue Anthropic knowingly trained its AI on Reddit users’ personal data without seeking their consent. Reddit also contends that Anthropic’s earlier assurances in 2024 about restricting its data collection crawlers were not genuine.
This issue isn’t new. Website publishers have increasingly pushed back against AI companies using crawlers to gather data. While technical guidelines like robots.txt files exist to instruct bots, they aren’t always legally binding, though ignoring them can support claims of misconduct.
Reddit has been actively licensing its content to other AI companies. In May 2024, it struck a deal with OpenAI, and CEO Steve Huffman has highlighted that providing a steady stream of new information is crucial for AI development. Reddit has similar agreements with Google, Sprinklr, and Cision.
However, Reddit states in its complaint that Anthropic “refused to engage” in licensing discussions. This contrasts with other AI giants who, according to Reddit, have agreed to respect user choices, including deleting posts if users choose to do so.
Anthropic, however, isn’t backing down. A company spokesperson told The Register, “We disagree with Reddit’s claims and will defend ourselves vigorously.”
Reddit positions itself as a defender of the “Open Internet,” but argues this doesn’t give Anthropic a free pass. “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 explained to The Register.
The spokesperson further stated that Anthropic was “caught accessing or attempting to access Reddit content via automated bots at least 100,000 times” despite repeated requests to stop. They described it not as a misunderstanding but a “sustained effort to extract value.”
Reddit sees this lawsuit as a last resort to compel Anthropic to cease what it deems unlawful practices and to “abide by its claimed values.”
