Reddit sues Anthropic, says AI company exploited user data
Reddit Inc. sued artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, saying it has used the social media company's content without permission to train its AI models.
The lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that Anthropic attempted to access Reddit data more than 100,000 times since last July. Reddit said this "unauthorized commercial use of its content" has breached its rules and exploited users' personal data without their consent.
An Anthropic spokesperson said the company disagrees "with Reddit's claims and will defend ourselves vigorously," The AI firm, which was started by a group of ex-OpenAI employees, has taken a public position of being more oriented toward safety and responsibility than some of its competitors.
Reddit, a San Francisco-based social media platform, called Anthropic's emphasis on trust and honesty "empty marketing gimmicks." The AI startup "bills itself as the white knight of the AI industry," yet "it is anything but," Reddit said in the lawsuit.
"We believe in an open internet - that doesn't mean open for commercial exploitation," Ben Lee, Reddit's chief legal officer, said in an email. "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."
In an interview, Lee said Reddit held several conversations with Anthropic in an effort to reach a licensing agreement, as it has with other AI companies such as OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. Lee said he was optimistic about reaching a deal until recently and views the lawsuit as the company's final option to force Anthropic back to the bargaining table.
Reddit would prefer to reach an agreement outside of court, Lee said, as the legal process could be lengthy.
This suit is among a flurry of high-profile complaints against AI companies, including Meta Platforms Inc. and OpenAI, over claims of unauthorized use of copyrighted material to train their generative AI models.
In March, a New York federal judge ruled that a copyright infringement suit brought by the New York Times and other newspapers can move forward against OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged unauthorized use of news articles to train chatbots and other AI tools. The newspapers are seeking billions of dollars in damages as compensation for unlawful use of their copyrighted content.
The case is Reddit Inc. v. Anthropic PBC, CGC-25-625892, California Superior Court, San Francisco County.
(With assistance from Malathi Nayak.)
Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Broadcom shares drop as revenue forecast fails to impress
(Reuters) - Broadcom shares fell nearly 4% in premarket trading on Friday, after the company's third-quarter revenue forecast failed to impress investors who have been extremely bullish on chip stocks amid an artificial intelligence boom. The Palo Alto, California-based company, which supplies semiconductors to Apple and Samsung, provides advanced networking gear that allows vast amounts of data to travel across AI data centers, making its chips crucial for the development of generative AI technology. Broadcom forecast third-quarter revenue of around $15.80 billion, compared with analysts' average estimate of $15.71 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. "High expectations drove a bit of downside," Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon said in a note. Broadcom also helps design custom AI processors for large cloud providers, which compete against Nvidia's pricey off-the-shelf chips. Global chipmakers, including Nvidia, have been vulnerable to U.S. President Donald Trump's shifting trade policy and export curbs as Washington attempts to limit Beijing's access to advanced U.S. technology. "AVGO is ramping two additional customers, but they are still small. So the processor business will grow this year, but at a measured rate," said Morgan Stanley. Last week, rival Marvell Technology forecast second-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimate, betting on strong demand for its custom chips powering AI workload in data centers. Broadcom's valuation had crossed $1 trillion for the first time in December after it forecast massive expansion in demand for chips that power AI. Its shares have risen about 12% so far this year. It has a 12-month forward price-to-earnings ratio of 35.36, compared with Marvell's 20.63, according to data compiled by LSEG. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
Leaked Microsoft org chart shows the team Jay Parikh assembled to lead CoreAI, full of fellow ex-Meta execs
Jay Parikh leads Microsoft's new CoreAI group, created in January. The team includes Parikh's former Meta colleagues, plus longtime Microsoft executives. CoreAI is responsible for building Microsoft's artificial-intelligence platform and developer tools. An internal Microsoft organization chart shows the top execs Jay Parikh has assembled to help him lead the new CoreAI group. In January, CEO Satya Nadella put Parikh in charge of this unit, central to Microsoft 's ambition to help developers build AI agents capable of working alongside human employees. The roster, recently viewed by Business Insider, includes executives who overlapped with Parikh at Meta, where he was previously head of engineering. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the org chart and said some of the Meta execs were hired prior to Parikh. Asha Sharma, corporate vice president, product, AI platform Sharma leads product development for Microsoft's AI platform and has a team of nearly 400 reports. Sharma was previously the chief operating officer of Instacart and a vice president at Meta, where she overlapped with Parikh. Eric Boyd, corporate vice president, engineering Boyd has been working on AI at Microsoft for at least a decade. Boyd's team, which now includes more than 2,200 employees according to the org chart, moved under Parikh when the organization was created in January. Last year, there were concerns among some employees that the team was becoming just "IT for OpenAI." Julia Liuson, president, Microsoft developer division Liuson runs the largest part of the CoreAI organization, comprising about 7,000 of the organization's 10,000 or so employees. Liuson has spent more than 33 years at Microsoft. The team, internally referred to as DevDiv, builds tools, platforms, and services for developers. Caitie McCaffrey, member of technical staff Previously a technical adviser to Nadella, McCaffrey is an engineer who reports directly to Parikh. According to her LinkedIn profile, McCaffrey is responsible for "leading critical technical initiatives and defining our engineering standards to improve security, quality, and productivity." Jason Taylor, CoreAI corporate vice president of AI infrastructure Taylor is Microsoft's deputy chief technology officer. He was previously a vice president of infrastructure at Meta, where he also overlapped with Parikh. He has a small team of about eight reports. Michael Kirkland, vice president of engagement, CoreAI Kirkland is the new vice president of engagement for the organization, hired last month. So far, he doesn't have any reports. Kirkland is a former vice president of technology communications at Meta. He was there when Parikh was, too. Tim Bozarth, corporate vice president of EngThrive Bozarth is responsible for Engineering Thrive, or EngThrive, an internal initiative Microsoft describes as "redefining engineering efficiency and developer experiences across the company." Bozarth, who joined Microsoft in 2022 from Google, has a few dozen direct reports.
Fast Company
an hour ago
- Fast Company
Why digital-native publishers like Business Insider are most exposed in the AI era
For the past year and a half, there's been a simmering concern over what AI is going to do to the workforce. Last week, that concern boiled over in a big way following back-to-back news stories: First, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei set off alarm bells by predicting that AI would wipe out half of entry-level jobs and massively drive up unemployment. As if on cue, Business Insider announced it was laying off 21% of its staff. While the two obviously aren't directly related, the one-two punch landed hard in the media business, which faces an existential threat to its business model (in a nutshell, AI answers mean less traffic than search). But like all demographics, it's important to remember that the media isn't a monolith. While AI summaries mean rapidly changing audience habits for all publishers, BI 's move emphasizes that digital-native brands are particularly vulnerable. In her memo to BI staff, CEO Barbara Peng said the company was 'going all-in on AI,' explaining that the layoffs were part of a broader strategic shift and that, going forward, the publication would need to reduce its dependence on traffic in general. In addition to cutting click-dependent areas like its commerce business, BI would launch live journalism events, double down on subscriptions, and encourage all its journalists to embrace AI tools. This is far from the publication's first move on this course. Not long ago, the company had ambitions to become a general interest brand, but after changing its name to Insider in 2021, it switched back to Business Insider less than three years later. Since then, the publication has been investing more in unique voices and talent instead of the volume content that fueled the company's rise in the 2010s, when media brands like Vice, Quartz, and Buzzfeed were dominant. The old media playbook meets a new world The thing about BI, though, is that it was one of the few success stories to come out of that era. The publication sold to Axel Springer for $343 million dollars back in 2015, just before the bottom fell out of the scale media market. Perhaps that's why it took BI so long to adapt. It's been shedding its workforce for a couple of years—now roughly half the size of its 2022 peak of 1,000 people, according to Press Gazette. Now AI is forcing the issue. Peng's memo says that 70% of BI 's business suffers from 'traffic sensitivity,' a euphemism for content designed to attract eyeballs on the open web by appearing in search, social, or feeds. Who are those people? How do you keep them coming back or transacting with your brand? In the media model BI was built for, it didn't matter—it only mattered how big the number was on any given day. Now BI is doing exactly what any media consultant would recommend: adopting tactics like paywalled subscriptions, events, newsletters, and first-party data. It's the right strategy, but for BI the moves are reactive retreats rather than proactive bets. That doesn't mean they're bad ideas, but BI 's DNA was born out of a different era. It has a brand, but is it strong enough to make the transition that AI demands? I don't mean to pick on BI, but I do think it exemplifies why digital media companies from the 2010s are likely going to have the hardest time in the AI era. Legacy mainstream outlets like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have built moats with their strong journalism and diverse revenue streams. On the other end, smaller digital upstarts like 404 Media, The Ankler, and The Free Press are finding success by cultivating talent, getting scoops, and offering unique perspectives. It's the brands in between—the ones that followed the same playbook as BI —now scrambling to re-architect themselves to meet this moment. Ziff Davis (owner of PCMag, Mashable, and IGN) is similarly feeling pressure, as seen in its lawsuit against OpenAI, arguing that its strategy of publishing evergreen, free content on the internet to maximize clicks has made it particularly vulnerable to substitution by AI. Experimentation isn't transformation As evidence of the BI 's all-in bet on AI, Peng talked about AI-powered features like its site search and dynamic paywall. She also mentioned that 75% of the staff were now using AI tools, specifically ChatGPT Enterprise, with the aim to get the figure to 100%. The note encourages 'bold experimentation,' and says they're building prompt libraries and sharing everyday AI use cases among staff. However, this description of AI initiatives, while directionally solid, sounds like it's still in the early stages. Contrast that with an AI-forward newsroom like Reuters, which has built modular tooling tailored to newsroom workflows, under a clear 'reduce, augment, transform' framework. It's great that they're moving forward, but without a focus on systems, transformation will be piecemeal. And while the choice of ChatGPT is expected given the company's partnership with OpenAI, pushing a single AI model over all the others is inherently limiting. For other digital media brands who fear death or downsizing, BI 's approach is instructive. It's urgent to rethink dependency on traffic, and even the lens of measuring success through traffic. Certainly, ad impressions are the KPI driving all this, and it's not going to go away overnight (or ever, really). But a long decline seems inevitable. Shifting focus from traffic to metrics that measure impact, engagement, and loyalty is step one. That's the path to cultivating direct reader relationships—essential to building media brands that are sustainable in the AI era. BI 's shift is a step in the right direction, but survival won't come from cost-cutting or tool adoption alone. The digital media brands that make it through this next wave will be the ones that know who they're for and what makes them worth returning to. That means being willing to rethink how things get made in the first place—and why.
