Reddit sues Anthropic over unauthorized AI training

Reddit filed a lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic in a Northern California court on Wednesday, accusing it of unlawfully using redditors’ content to train its models without a license.

The complaint states Anthropic violated Reddit’s user agreement, ignored explicit warnings, and scraped the platform over 100,000 times—disregarding standard web protocol.

This is the first time a major tech company has sued an AI firm over the use of training data. While similar lawsuits have been brought by media outlets, authors, and artists, Reddit's action marks a significant escalation.

For example, the New York Times sued ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Microsoft for using its news articles without permission or payment. Stand-up comedian Sarah Silverman and other authors sued Meta for training its AI models on their books without authorization.

Unlike Anthropic, OpenAI and Google have struck official deals with Reddit that include user protections.

Reddit is seeking damages and a court order to block further use of its data. Anthropic denies wrongdoing and says that it will fight the claims.