Platform accuses chatbot developer of breaching its terms and unfairly profiting from user-generated content.
Reddit has filed a lawsuit against the AI firm Anthropic, accusing it of illegally scraping user comments to train its chatbot, Claude. The case, brought in California Superior Court, opens a new front in the growing legal battle against AI firms accused of harvesting online data without consent.
According to the filing, Anthropic used automated bots to extract Reddit content in breach of the platform’s terms of use. Reddit’s chief legal officer, Ben Lee, said AI developers must be held accountable for how they gather and use data. “AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data,” he said.
The lawsuit differs from other recent actions against Anthropic, such as those from music publishers over copyrighted lyrics. Instead, Reddit is arguing breach of contract and unfair competition, claiming that Anthropic benefited commercially by training its models on material it had no right to use.
Reddit has previously signed licensing deals with companies including Google and OpenAI. These agreements come with safeguards that give users some control over how their content is handled and protect them from unsolicited contact. With a public listing on the horizon, Reddit is keen to assert its role not just as a content platform but as a steward of user trust.
Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI executives, says it uses public data in line with legal norms and has described its training methods as statistical rather than extractive. But Reddit claims the company scraped its site more than 100,000 times – even as it claimed to block bots – and that this data collection was systematic and unauthorised.
The case arrives amid wider scrutiny of how AI companies acquire the material that powers their tools. As large language models become more embedded in everyday life, content creators and platforms are pushing back against what they see as unlicensed appropriation of their work. Anthropic is already facing other lawsuits over the use of copyrighted material.
The outcome of Reddit’s action could set important legal precedents, especially as regulators begin to examine the intersection of user rights, intellectual property and artificial intelligence. The stakes are high, not just for Reddit and Anthropic, but for any company that relies on user-generated content or trains models on publicly available data.
Source: Noah Wire Services
- https://thefrontierpost.com/reddit-sues-anthropic-for-scraping-user-comments-to-train-claude/ – Please view link – unable to able to access data
- https://apnews.com/article/f5ea042beb253a3f05a091e70531692d – On June 4, 2025, Reddit filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in California Superior Court, alleging that the AI company illegally scraped content from millions of Reddit users to train its chatbot, Claude. Reddit claims that Anthropic used automated bots to access Reddit’s data without permission and trained on users’ personal information without consent. Anthropic disputes these claims and intends to defend itself vigorously. This lawsuit focuses on the alleged breach of Reddit’s terms of use and unfair competition, rather than copyright infringement. ([apnews.com](https://apnews.com/article/f5ea042beb253a3f05a091e70531692d?utm_source=openai))
- https://www.reuters.com/business/reddit-sues-ai-startup-anthropic-allegedly-using-data-without-permission-2025-06-04/ – Reddit has filed a lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic in San Francisco Superior Court, accusing the company of using Reddit’s content without authorization to train its Claude AI models. Despite previous assurances that it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit, Anthropic reportedly scraped Reddit data more than 100,000 times. Reddit claims this unauthorized use violated its user policy and helped Anthropic generate commercial value reportedly in the tens of billions of dollars. Unlike Google and OpenAI, which have licensing agreements, Anthropic allegedly refused negotiations with Reddit. ([reuters.com](https://www.reuters.com/business/reddit-sues-ai-startup-anthropic-allegedly-using-data-without-permission-2025-06-04/?utm_source=openai))
- https://www.ft.com/content/e6a4dcae-2bda-42de-8112-768844673cea – Major AI companies are facing a wave of lawsuits for copyright infringement and aggressive data collection from the web. This issue has intensified as companies reach a ‘data frontier’ that hinders technological advancements. Recently, three authors sued Anthropic for copying and exploiting hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books without obtaining licenses. Similarly, The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for massive commercial exploitation of its intellectual property, with the outcome potentially setting a precedent for other companies. ([ft.com](https://www.ft.com/content/e6a4dcae-2bda-42de-8112-768844673cea?utm_source=openai))
- https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/reddit-ceo-stands-by-change-that-blocks-most-non-google-search-engines/ – Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is standing by Reddit’s decision to block companies from scraping the site without an AI agreement. Last week, 404 Media noticed that search engines that weren’t Google were no longer listing recent Reddit posts in results. This was because Reddit updated its Robots Exclusion Protocol (txt file) to block bots from scraping the site. The file reads: ‘Reddit believes in an open Internet, but not the misuse of public content.’ Since the news broke, OpenAI announced SearchGPT, which can show recent Reddit results. ([arstechnica.com](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/reddit-ceo-stands-by-change-that-blocks-most-non-google-search-engines/?utm_source=openai))
- https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/universal-music-sues-ai-start-up-anthropic-for-scraping-song-lyrics/ – Universal Music has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic, as the world’s largest music group battles against chatbots that churn out its artists’ lyrics. Universal and two other music companies allege that Anthropic scrapes their songs without permission and uses them to generate ‘identical or nearly identical copies of those lyrics’ via Claude, its rival to ChatGPT. When Claude is asked for lyrics to the song “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, for example, it responds with ‘a nearly word-for-word copy of those lyrics,’ Universal, Concord, and ABKCO said in a filing with a US court in Nashville, Tennessee. ([arstechnica.com](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/universal-music-sues-ai-start-up-anthropic-for-scraping-song-lyrics/?utm_source=openai))
- https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/31/24210565/reddit-microsoft-anthropic-perplexity-pay-ai-search – In an interview, Steve Huffman calls out Microsoft’s Bing, Anthropic, and Perplexity for scraping Reddit’s data without permission. ‘It has been a real pain in the ass to block these companies.’ ([theverge.com](https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/31/24210565/reddit-microsoft-anthropic-perplexity-pay-ai-search?utm_source=openai))
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