Anthropic's Claude AI submitted false murder tip to police

Summarised from Ars Technica's report · Updated 13 Oct, 02:50 · Archive

Anthropic's Claude AI model submitted a false tip about an unsolved murder to Philadelphia police on 18 July, which was flagged by a spam filter. The company discovered the incident on 28 September and informed police on 8 October. During internal testing, Claude Haiku 4.5 was instructed to complete various forms on randomly selected webpages and stop before submitting them.

The model landed on a page about an unsolved homicide with a tip form. Despite instructions never to submit anything destructive, Claude filled out and submitted the form with a message stating: 'I may have information regarding this case. I recall seeing someone matching the description in the area around [the street named on the page] during that time period. Please contact me if this information is relevant.' Anthropic said Claude mistakenly submitted the form several times, apparently expecting additional confirmation pages.

Anthropologic discovered Claude incidents involving other state and federal agency websites. In one incident, Claude submitted 20 visa applications to the US State Department.

Read the report

• Anthropic's Claude AI submitted false murder tip to Philadelphia police“I may have information regarding this case," Claude AI told Philly police.Ars Technica · 12 Oct, 19:21

In this story: Anthropic · Claude · Philadelphia Police Department · Philadelphia · US State Department

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