Reddit RDDT has filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court against artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, claiming the firm scraped Reddit content more than 100,000 times without permission, to train its Claude chatbot, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit alleges Anthropic, which is backed by Amazon AMZN and Alphabet GOOG GOOGL)), violated Reddit's user agreement and intentionally ignored robots.txt instructions, which is a standard signal to bots not to crawl a site, TechCrunch says. According to Reddit, the scraping began in July 2024 after Anthropic had publicly committed to blocking its bots from the site, Reuters reports.
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According to TechCrunch, Reddit says it approached Anthropic with licensing options, similar to those it already established with OpenAI and Google. Anthropic, however, declined to participate in any formal agreement, continuing to ingest Reddit content despite explicit warnings.
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Claude Allegedly Trained On Reddit Data Without Safeguards
Reuters says that Reddit cited Claude's own statements admitting it was trained on "at least some Reddit data" and indicated uncertainty about whether deleted user content was included in the training set.
The online discussion platform claims Anthropic profited from this activity "to the tune of tens of billions of dollars," while refusing to offer compensation or uphold community trust. In its complaint, Reddit described Anthropic as styling itself as a "white knight" of AI ethics, while violating terms of service repeatedly, Reuters reports.
Anthropic spokesperson Danielle Ghighlieri told TechCrunch in a statement that the company disagrees with Reddit's claims and intends to defend itself vigorously.
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A First For Big Tech And A Sign Of What's Coming
TechCrunch says that Reddit's lawsuit marks the first time a major tech platform has taken legal action against an AI model developer over training data access without a license.
This move comes on the heels of similar lawsuits filed by other content creators and publishers. The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft MSFT for using its articles, while authors like Sarah Silverman and several musicians have launched lawsuits against Meta META and others for similar data practices.
Reddit, however, is focusing its legal argument on user agreement violations and unauthorized commercial enrichment, rather than copyright claims, according to Reuters.
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Monetization Meets Moderation In The Age Of AI
Reddit Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee said that the online discussion board supports the open internet, but believes AI companies need "clear limitations" on how they use public content, Reuters reports.
"We will not tolerate profit-seeking entities like Anthropic commercially exploiting Reddit content for billions of dollars without any return for Redditors or respect for their privacy," Lee told TechCrunch. While Reddit has monetized access to its data through structured deals with other AI companies, it argues that Anthropic's refusal to enter such agreements represents a clear boundary violation.
The case could influence broader legal standards for data usage and reshape how generative AI systems engage with publicly available content at scale, Reuters says. With Reddit already forming paid partnerships with companies like Google and OpenAI, the outcome could signal a pivotal shift in AI content sourcing, investor risk, and the competitive landscape for startups like Anthropic.
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