Reddit sues AI agency Anthropic over unauthorised information scraping for Claude
Social media platform Reddit has filed a lawsuit in opposition to AI startup Anthropic, accusing it of unauthorized information scraping to coach its Claude chatbot.
In its Wednesday submitting in San Francisco Superior Courtroom, Reddit alleged that Anthropic accessed its platform greater than 100,000 instances after July 2024, regardless of having publicly introduced that it had halted such exercise.
The submitting accuses Anthropic of violating Reddit’s consumer settlement, scraping content material with out consent, and persevering with to make use of the platform’s information to coach its massive language fashions.
Within the grievance, Reddit described Anthropic as a “late-blooming” AI firm that presents a public picture of accountability whereas allegedly working in violation of guidelines and limits.
“This case is in regards to the two faces of Anthropic,” the lawsuit reads, accusing the corporate of “business exploitation” of Reddit’s content material for revenue.
Chatting with The Verge, Reddit’s chief authorized officer, Ben Lee, argued that no different platform hosts the breadth of genuine dialog that Reddit does, and that this trove, spanning many years, reportedly holds a multibillion-dollar worth within the AI coaching race.
“Now greater than ever, persons are in search of genuine human-to-human dialog. Reddit hosts practically 20 years of wealthy, human dialogue on nearly each subject conceivable. These conversations don’t occur anyplace else—and so they’re central to coaching language fashions like Claude,” Lee mentioned.
Reddit has licensed its information to AI firms, together with a $60 million-per-year deal signed with Google in early 2024. The platform has additionally partnered with companies reminiscent of OpenAI, Sprinklr, and Cision for comparable information entry agreements.
As such, the lawsuit seeks damages, restitution, and a everlasting injunction barring Anthropic from utilizing Reddit-derived information in any of its merchandise. It additionally requests that the courtroom prohibit the corporate from licensing or profiting off any AI fashions educated on Reddit content material.
Authorized tensions over AI coaching information are mounting throughout the media panorama. In a single high-profile case, The New York Occasions sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, accusing them of utilizing its reporting with out consent. Extra lately, Vox Media and Condé Nast joined a lawsuit in opposition to AI agency Cohere for comparable claims of copyright infringement.
Mounting lawsuits like Reddit’s have amplified requires stronger consumer rights within the digital economic system. Critics argue that centralized platforms proceed to extract worth from user-generated content material whereas giving little again in return.
Decentralized social networks, reminiscent of Lens Protocol and Farcaster, have emerged as options, providing blockchain-based fashions the place customers personal their information and earn from its use.
In the meantime, platforms like Bittensor and Ocean Protocol are constructing decentralised infrastructures the place customers can contribute information or AI fashions in change for on-chain rewards.