This is an announcement that is causing a stir in the world of artificial intelligence and social media. Indeed, Reddit filed a complaint this Wednesday against Anthropic's AI for breach of contract and specifies that the company engaged in illegal and unfair business practices by using social media data without authorization.
Furthermore, the complaint confirms that Anthropic trained its models using user data as a resource. So, all of this was done illegally, and Reddit claims to have suffered significant harm.
A scourge that continues to grow?
Faced with the magnitude of this affair, Bennett Lee, Reddit's general counsel, clarified the following to our colleagues at TechCrunch: “We will not tolerate for-profit entities like Anthropic commercially exploiting Reddit content for billions of dollars without any return to redditors or respect for their privacy.”
However, Reddit claims to have reached agreements with other providers of AI models like OpenAI and Google so that they can run experiments using user data. However, in its complaint, the social network states that conditions are put in place to protect the interests and privacy of these users.
Moreover, it is not the only company to have sued artificial intelligence providers. Indeed, the New York Times sued OpenAI for training its models on news articles without payment or permission. Not to mention that Sarah Silverman and other writers have sued Meta for the same reasons.
Anthropic denies any accusations regarding its AI
While in its complaint, Reddit claims to have contacted Anthropic and indicated the reasons for this action, it seems that the startup has refused all communication. Indeed, in a letter sent to TechCrunch, Danielle Ghighlieri, Anthropic's spokesperson, stated: "We do not agree with Reddit's claims and will vigorously defend ourselves."
Also in its legal action, Reddit stated that the crawlers ignored robots.txt files that allow the crawling of websites to be authorized or prohibited. Thus, the social network indicates that Anthropic would have crawled the platform more than 100,000 times after announcing the blocking of its robots in 2024.
As a result, and given the scale of this case, Reddit is demanding damages from the startup and restitution for the amount of enrichment it made by breaking certain rules. Note that an injunction is also requested so that AI models do not use its content.
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