Jun 05, 2025 11:15:00

Reddit sues Anthropic, alleging it used its data to train AI models without a license agreement

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The online message board site Reddit has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic for using its data to train AI models without proper licensing agreements. Reddit claims that Anthropic's unauthorized use of the data for commercial purposes is illegal and violates Reddit's terms of service.

SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO
https://redditinc.com/hubfs/Reddit%20Inc/Content/PDFs/Docket%20Stamped%20Complaint.pdf

Reddit sues Anthropic for allegedly not paying for training data | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/04/reddit-sues-anthropic-for-allegedly-not-paying-for-training-data/

Reddit sues Anthropic, alleging its bots accessed Reddit more than 100,000 times | The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/679768/reddit-sues-anthropic-alleging-its-bots-accessed-reddit-more-than-100000-times-since-last-july

In a complaint filed in San Francisco County Superior Court in California, Reddit alleges that Anthropic improperly used Reddit content beginning in December 2021 to develop Claude, a company valued at billions of dollars, and unfairly profit from it.

The lawsuit also alleges that not only the content posted on Reddit but also the Reddit platform and technical infrastructure are Reddit's personal property, and that Anthropic's unauthorized access and use of this infrastructure for economic gain has impaired the server capacity and functionality that Reddit can provide to its legitimate users.

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Reddit claims that Anthropic's scraping bot ignored robots.txt . Anthropic claims to have added Reddit to its web crawling blocklist since mid-May 2024, but Reddit reported that scraping has continued more than 100,000 times since then.

In the lawsuit, Reddit calls Anthropic 'a late-blooming AI company that bills itself as the AI industry's white knight,' and states, 'This lawsuit is about Anthropic's two faces: one that seeks to ingratiate itself in consumer consciousness by advocating for justice and respecting boundaries and the law, and one that ignores all rules to enrich itself.'

Reddit is seeking an injunction against Anthropic from using the content, as well as punitive damages and restitution for profits earned from scraping Reddit content.

'In a world flattened by AI, the humanity of Reddit is uniquely valuable,' Reddit's Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee told The Verge. 'For nearly 20 years, Reddit has been a place for rich, human discussions about every topic imaginable. These conversations can't happen anywhere else. And they're crucial for training language models like Claude.'

'We disagree with Reddit's allegations and will vigorously defend ourselves,' Anthropic spokesperson Daniel Ghiglieri said in an email to TechCrunch.