Reddit claims that Claude engaged in unauthorized scraping of user content from its platform to train its AI models. The complaint, filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Wednesday, accuses Anthropic of violating Reddit’s user policies and ignoring multiple requests to establish a licensing agreement, as reported by Reuters.
Reddit alleges that Anthropic
accessed the platform over 100,000 times since July 2024 using automated bots, contradicting claims that it had blocked such activity, the report stated.
The lawsuit contends that Claude, Anthropic’s AI chatbot, was trained on conversations from Reddit without proper consent from either the platform or its users.
According to a report in The Verge, Reddit’s complaint suggests that Anthropic adopts a ‘two-faced’ approach. The social media platform accused the Amazon-backed tech startup of publicly portraying itself as an ethical ‘white knight’ of the AI landscape while secretly engaging in practices that infringe upon copyright and user privacy.
Reddit reportedly claimed in its filing that the AI startup professes to uphold boundaries, yet simultaneously disregards any rules that hinder its “efforts to maximize profits.”
Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, stated that while the platform supports an open internet, it necessitates ‘clear limitations’ on how AI companies utilize scraped content. Lee emphasized that Reddit’s community is ‘uniquely valuable’ for a world increasingly dominated by AI, and the conversations on the platform are essential for training AI language models like Claude.
Anthropic issues brief statement
The lawsuit, per reports, indicates that Anthropic has resisted signing agreements similar to those Reddit has with OpenAI and Google. Reddit claims this refusal has enabled the startup to commercially exploit its data, potentially generating “tens of billions of dollars” in profits without accountability.
Reddit is seeking unspecified restitution, punitive damages, and a court injunction preventing Anthropic from using its content for commercial AI training, the Reuters report added.
A spokesperson for Anthropic stated that they disagree with Reddit’s allegations and plan to defend themselves ‘vigorously’.
The recent lawsuit against the AI company has attracted significant attention online. A user on X remarked that training a language model with data from Reddit was a “horrible place to start.”
Training a model with any data from Reddit is a horrible place to start
— The Judgmental Dog (@the_addressor) June 4, 2025
Another user posted a screenshot of a Google search AI overview concerning depression, showing a Reddit user suggesting jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. They commented, “Imagine training your AI from Reddit just to get this.”
Imagine training Your AI from reddit just to get this pic.twitter.com/sqHNLXjDUU
— Momoss???????? (@momoss____) June 4, 2025
“I thought Anthropic was supposed to be cool; whose idea was it to train on Reddit data? That’s just crazy,” a comment on X read.
Growing list of lawsuits against AI companies
This isn’t the first legal challenge faced by Anthropic. They were previously sued by a group of authors alleging the company used their copyrighted books to train its AI, according to The Verge. Universal Music Group has also filed a lawsuit against the AI firm for infringing on lyric copyrights, as added in the report.
This reflects a broader trend where publishers and creators are pursuing legal action against AI companies for using their work without authorization. OpenAI has faced similar lawsuits from The New York Times, a coalition of authors, and several media organizations.
Anthropic specializes in AI safety and research, focusing on developing safer and more reliable AI models. Its Claude family of large language models (LLMs) competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Nonetheless, Google has partnered with Anthropic to enhance its Vertex AI platform. Both Amazon and Microsoft have also invested in Anthropic.
