Training of AI models: Reddit sues Anthropic
The social media platform Reddit is suing the AI startup Anthropic for breach of contract and "unfair" business practices, making serious allegations.
(Image: Ascannio/Shutterstock.com)
Reddit filed a lawsuit against AI start-up Anthropic on Wednesday for alleged breach of contract and "unlawful and unfair business practices". The social media company accuses Anthropic of unlawfully using its platform and data. In the lawsuit (AZ. CGC-25-625892) filed Wednesday in the Superior Court of the State of California in San Francisco County, Reddit alleges that Anthropic trained its AI models with the personal data of Reddit users without obtaining their consent. The unauthorized commercial use of its content caused Reddit damages.
Anthropic is anything but the "white knight of the AI industry" that it advertises itself as, Reddit said in the lawsuit. Rather, Anthropic is "in fact intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever asking for their consent". Last summer, Anthropic was accused of aggressively and illegally harvesting data from websites to train its AI systems, potentially violating the publishers' terms of use. The lawsuit now states: "In July 2024, in response to Reddit's public protests regarding Anthropic's misuse of Reddit content, Anthropic claimed that it had denied its bots access to Reddit. This was not the case. Anthropic's bots continued to access Reddit's servers over a hundred thousand times."
Large amounts of data required for AI training
The leading companies in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) are competing to develop ever more powerful and sophisticated language models and need vast amounts of data to do so. AI companies like Anthropic, as well as OpenAI, train their large generative AI language models with massive amounts of data from a variety of sources. Anthropic's AI chatbot Claude, which competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT, can respond to a range of prompts in natural language. The stated goal of Anthropic, which was founded by a group of former OpenAI employees, is "the responsible development and maintenance of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity".
In its lawsuit, Reddit describes these claims as "empty advertising gimmicks". Unlike its competitors, Anthropic has refused to respect the basic privacy rights of Reddit users, including the removal of deleted posts from its systems. Rather, Anthropic is "trained on the world's largest online discussion platform" Reddit.com.
Reddit began banning various search engines and their web crawlers last year if they did not come to a license agreement with the online platform. Only Google remained exempt because Google licensed content from Reddit for AI training. In mid-May, Reddit announced a similar partnership with OpenAI, which will allow the company to train its AI models on Reddit content. This was reported by the US news channel CNBC. The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, is therefore a major investor in Reddit. His stake in Reddit is now estimated at well over one billion US dollars.
Videos by heise
Anthropic violates the Reddit rules
"The unauthorized commercial use of Reddit content harms Reddit, which has created a market for licensing content through which Reddit establishes meaningful guardrails on the use of such content to protect both Reddit and its users," Reddit writes in the lawsuit. Other giants in the AI industry understand and respect Reddit's rules. For example, OpenAI, Google, Sprinklr and Cision have entered into formal license agreements with Reddit in exchange for lawful access to public content on the platform. "Anthropic doesn't care about the rules or the users of Reddit, even if its marketing material says it does: Anthropic believes it has the right to take and use any content it wants with impunity. This is not so."
Reddit points out in the lawsuit that it has rules in place that dictate how its data can be used. "These rules, which are clearly set forth in the Reddit User Agreement, prohibit anyone from making 'commercial use' of Reddit services or content without Reddit's consent." Reddit believes that the Reddit community should be open to anyone looking for connections and community. However, Reddit "has never allowed its platform and the countless communities that find a home there to be usurped by commercial actors who want to create billion-dollar companies and offer Reddit and its users nothing in return".
Reddit stated that the purpose of the lawsuit is to compel Anthropic to comply with its contractual and other legal obligations and to seek damages for Anthropic's breaches of those obligations.
(akn)
