Reddit Sues AI Giant Anthropic Over Content Use
Social media outlet Reddit filed a lawsuit Wednesday against artificial intelligence company Anthropic, accusing the startup of illegally scraping millions of user comments to train its Claude chatbot without permission or compensation.
The lawsuit in a California state court represents the latest front in the growing battle between content providers and AI companies over the use of data to train increasingly sophisticated language models that power the generative AI revolution.
Anthropic, valued at $61.5 billion and heavily backed by Amazon, was founded in 2021 by former executives from OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
The company, known for its Claude chatbot and AI models, positions itself as focused on AI safety and responsible development.
"This case is about the two faces of Anthropic: the public face that attempts to ingratiate itself into the consumer's consciousness with claims of righteousness and respect for boundaries and the law, and the private face that ignores any rules that interfere with its attempts to further line its pockets," the suit said.
According to the complaint, Anthropic has been training its models on Reddit content since at least December 2021, with CEO Dario Amodei co-authoring research papers that specifically identified high-quality content for data training.
The lawsuit alleges that despite Anthropic's public claims that it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit, the company's automated systems continued to harvest Reddit's servers more than 100,000 times in subsequent months.
Reddit is seeking monetary damages and a court injunction to force Anthropic to comply with its user agreement terms. The company has requested a jury trial.
In an email to AFP, Anthropic said "We disagree with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously."
Reddit has entered into licensing agreements with other AI giants including Google and OpenAI, which allow those companies to use Reddit content under terms that protect user privacy and provide compensation to the platform.
Those deals have helped lift Reddit's share price since it went public in 2024.
Reddit shares closed up more than six percent on Wednesday following news of the lawsuit.
Musicians, book authors, visual artists and news publications have sued the various AI companies that used their data without permission or payment.
AI companies generally defend their practices by claiming fair use, arguing that training AI on large datasets fundamentally changes the original content and is necessary for innovation.
Though most of these lawsuits are still in early stages, their outcomes could have a profound effect on the shape of the AI industry.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Arabiya
an hour ago
- Al Arabiya
Musk deletes post claiming Trump ‘in the Epstein files'
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has deleted an explosive allegation linking Donald Trump with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that he posted on social media during a vicious public fallout with the US president this week. Musk -- who exited his role as a top White House advisor just last week -- alleged on Thursday that the Republican leader is featured in secret government files on former associates of Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while he faced sex trafficking charges. The Trump administration has acknowledged it is reviewing tens of thousands of documents, videos and investigative material that his 'MAGA' movement says will unmask public figures complicit in Epstein's crimes. 'Time to drop the really big bomb: (Trump) is in the Epstein files,' Musk posted on his social media platform, X as his growing feud with the president boiled over into a spectacularly public row on Thursday. 'That is the real reason they have not been made public.' Musk did not reveal which files he was talking about and offered no evidence for his claim. He initially doubled down on the claim, writing in a follow-up message: 'Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.' However, he appeared to have deleted both tweets by Saturday morning. Supporters on the conspiratorial end of Trump's 'Make America Great Again' base allege that Epstein's associates had their roles in his crimes covered up by government officials and others. They point the finger at Democrats and Hollywood celebrities, although not at Trump himself. No official source has ever confirmed that the president appears in any of the material. Trump knew and socialized with Epstein but has denied spending time on Little Saint James, the private redoubt in the US Virgin Islands where prosecutors alleged Epstein trafficked underage girls for sex. 'Terrific guy,' Trump, who was Epstein's neighbor in both Florida and New York, said in an early 2000s profile of the financier. 'He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.' Just last week Trump gave Musk a glowing send-off as he left his cost-cutting role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But their relationship imploded within days as Musk described as an 'abomination' a spending bill that, if passed by Congress, could define Trump's second term in office. Trump hit back in an Oval Office diatribe and from there the row detonated, leaving Washington and riveted social media users alike stunned by the blistering break-up between the world's richest person and the world's most powerful. With real political and economic risks to their row, both then appeared to inch back from the brink on Friday, but the White House denied reports they would talk.
Asharq Al-Awsat
4 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
US Labor Market Slows Despite Job Adds in May
The United States added 139,000 jobs in May, more than expected but pointing to a labor market that continues to slow. The employment data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics exceeded forecasts for about 120,000 payroll gains but marked a decline from the revised 147,000 jobs added in April. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%, remaining near historic lows. Stocks surged at Friday's open, with all three major indexes gaining about 1%. In return, US government borrowing costs climbed as investors anticipated the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates higher for longer, making it less attractive to hold US debt. The BLS report showed job losses in the federal government continued to pile up, with that sector shedding 22,000 roles in May alone. The federal workforce is down by 59,000 since January, largely due to sweeping cuts by the Trump administration and multibillionaire tech executive Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency project. Even as the economy continued to add jobs at a relatively steady clip last month, the report showed other signs of a weakening labor market. The ratio of employed workers to the total population fell to 59.7%, its lowest since the pandemic. An alternative measure of unemployment that includes 'discouraged' workers, or those who have stopped looking for work, returned to a post-pandemic high of 4.5%. But President Donald Trump cheered the numbers, posting on his Truth Social platform Friday morning: 'AMERICA IS HOT! SIX MONTHS AGO IT WAS COLD AS ICE! BORDER IS CLOSED, PRICES ARE DOWN. WAGES ARE UP!' Trump had urged Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to slash interest rates by a full percentage point. 'Too Late' at the Fed is a disaster!' Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. In reality, employers added 212,000 jobs in November, unemployment was at 4.1%, the 12-month average of hourly pay gains have softened from nearly 4.2% then to 3.9% in May, and both the labor force participation rate and the employment-to-population ratio were slightly higher. Only consumer prices have meaningfully cooled, ticking down from an annual inflation rate of 2.7% in November to 2.3% in April, the latest month with available data. Analysts at Capital Economics called the May jobs report 'not as good as it looks.' Still, they wrote in a note Friday, 'it shows that tariffs are having little negative impact' and added that the Federal Reserve is likely to continue holding interest rates steady 'while it assesses the effects of policy changes on the economy.'
Asharq Al-Awsat
6 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
The 911 Presidency: Trump Flexes Emergency Powers in His Second Term
Call it the 911 presidency. Despite insisting that the United States is rebounding from calamity under his watch, President Donald Trump is harnessing emergency powers unlike any of his predecessors. Whether it's leveling punishing tariffs, deploying troops to the border or sidelining environmental regulations, Trump has relied on rules and laws intended only for use in extraordinary circumstances like war and invasion. An analysis by The Associated Press shows that 30 of Trump's 150 executive orders have cited some kind of emergency power or authority, a rate that far outpaces his recent predecessors. The result is a redefinition of how presidents can wield power. Instead of responding to an unforeseen crisis, Trump is using emergency powers to supplant Congress' authority and advance his agenda. 'What's notable about Trump is the enormous scale and extent, which is greater than under any modern president,' said Ilya Somin, who is representing five US businesses who sued the administration, claiming they were harmed by Trump's so-called 'Liberation Day' tariffs. Because Congress has the power to set trade policy under the Constitution, the businesses convinced a federal trade court that Trump overstepped his authority by claiming an economic emergency to impose the tariffs. An appeals court has paused that ruling while the judges review it. Growing concerns over actions The legal battle is a reminder of the potential risks of Trump's strategy. Judges traditionally have given presidents wide latitude to exercise emergency powers that were created by Congress. However, there's growing concern that Trump is pressing the limits when the US is not facing the kinds of threats such actions are meant to address. 'The temptation is clear,' said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program and an expert in emergency powers. 'What's remarkable is how little abuse there was before, but we're in a different era now.' Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has drafted legislation that would allow Congress to reassert tariff authority, said he believed the courts would ultimately rule against Trump in his efforts to single-handedly shape trade policy. 'It's the Constitution. James Madison wrote it that way, and it was very explicit,' Bacon said of Congress' power over trade. 'And I get the emergency powers, but I think it's being abused. When you're trying to do tariff policy for 80 countries, that's policy, not emergency action.' The White House pushed back on such concerns, saying Trump is justified in aggressively using his authority. 'President Trump is rightfully enlisting his emergency powers to quickly rectify four years of failure and fix the many catastrophes he inherited from Joe Biden — wide open borders, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, radical climate regulations, historic inflation, and economic and national security threats posed by trade deficits,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Trump frequently sites 1977 law to justify actions Of all the emergency powers, Trump has most frequently cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to justify slapping tariffs on imports. The law, enacted in 1977, was intended to limit some of the expansive authority that had been granted to the presidency decades earlier. It is only supposed to be used when the country faces 'an unusual and extraordinary threat' from abroad 'to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.' In analyzing executive orders issued since 2001, the AP found that Trump has invoked the law 21 times in presidential orders and memoranda. President George W. Bush, grappling with the aftermath of the most devastating terror attack on US soil, invoked the law just 14 times in his first term. Likewise, Barack Obama invoked the act only 21 times during his first term, when the US economy faced the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. The Trump administration has also deployed an 18th century law, the Alien Enemies Act, to justify deporting Venezuelan migrants to other countries, including El Salvador. Trump's decision to invoke the law relies on allegations that the Venezuelan government coordinates with the Tren de Aragua gang, but intelligence officials did not reach that conclusion. Congress has ceded its power to the presidency Congress has granted emergency powers to the presidency over the years, acknowledging that the executive branch can act more swiftly than lawmakers if there is a crisis. There are 150 legal powers — including waiving a wide variety of actions that Congress has broadly prohibited — that can only be accessed after declaring an emergency. In an emergency, for example, an administration can suspend environmental regulations, approve new drugs or therapeutics, take over the transportation system, or even override bans on testing biological or chemical weapons on human subjects, according to a list compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice. Democrats and Republicans have pushed the boundaries over the years. For example, in an attempt to cancel federal student loan debt, Joe Biden used a post-Sept. 11 law that empowered education secretaries to reduce or eliminate such obligations during a national emergency. The US Supreme Court eventually rejected his effort, forcing Biden to find different avenues to chip away at his goals. Before that, Bush pursued warrantless domestic wiretapping and Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the detention of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast in camps for the duration of World War II. Trump, in his first term, sparked a major fight with Capitol Hill when he issued a national emergency to compel construction of a border wall. Though Congress voted to nullify his emergency declaration, lawmakers could not muster up enough Republican support to overcome Trump's eventual veto. 'Presidents are using these emergency powers not to respond quickly to unanticipated challenges,' said John Yoo, who as a Justice Department official under George W. Bush helped expand the use of presidential authorities. 'Presidents are using it to step into a political gap because Congress chooses not to act.' Trump, Yoo said, 'has just elevated it to another level.' Trump's allies support his moves Conservative legal allies of the president also said Trump's actions are justified, and Vice President JD Vance predicted the administration would prevail in the court fight over tariff policy. 'We believe — and we're right — that we are in an emergency,' Vance said last week in an interview with Newsmax. 'You have seen foreign governments, sometimes our adversaries, threaten the American people with the loss of critical supplies,' Vance said. 'I'm not talking about toys, plastic toys. I'm talking about pharmaceutical ingredients. I'm talking about the critical pieces of the manufacturing supply chain.' Vance continued, 'These governments are threatening to cut us off from that stuff, that is by definition, a national emergency.' Republican and Democratic lawmakers have tried to rein in a president's emergency powers. Two years ago, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation that would have ended a presidentially-declared emergency after 30 days unless Congress votes to keep it in place. It failed to advance. Similar legislation hasn't been introduced since Trump's return to office. Right now, it effectively works in the reverse, with Congress required to vote to end an emergency. 'He has proved to be so lawless and reckless in so many ways. Congress has a responsibility to make sure there's oversight and safeguards,' said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who cosponsored an emergency powers reform bill in the previous session of Congress. He argued that, historically, leaders relying on emergency declarations has been a 'path toward autocracy and suppression.'
