Anthropic reported a user to the police over a chat with Claude
Kyiv • UNN
Anthropic notified police about a woman's chats involving plans for a "shooting" at the sheriff's office. She was charged with a felony in Florida.
In the United States, a woman named Carly Michelle Heller was arrested in Bonita Springs, Florida, after she allegedly told Anthropic’s Claude chatbot about her plan to "carry out a shooting" at a nearby sheriff’s office. Futurism reports, according to UNN.
Details
According to WINK News, Heller was charged with making a written threat of violence — a second-degree felony in Florida — after Anthropic’s internal software flagged her chats for human review. After an Anthropic employee reviewed them, WINK reports, the company concluded that Heller’s plans posed a credible threat and ultimately notified local police.
Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno told local reporters that the woman admitted she had used Claude as a "diary," apparently unaware that Anthropic employees could read her chat history.
As the publication notes, there is a real conflict between user privacy and the responsibility of artificial intelligence companies to prevent violent incidents. For example, after the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, Canada, in February, it quickly became clear that the perpetrator had actively used ChatGPT to plan the shooting.