Reddit has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing the company of unauthorized use of platform content for training generative AI without the appropriate license. The lawsuit was filed in the Northern California court, where Reddit claims that Anthropic used community data for commercial purposes, violating terms of use and ignoring user privacy protection rules.
According to the lawsuit, Anthropic continued to massively access Reddit content even after claims of blocking its bots, making over a hundred thousand data collection attempts since July this year. Reddit emphasizes that the company repeatedly warned Anthropic about the lack of permission for such activities but received no response to its requests.
The situation is particularly acute given that Reddit already has official agreements with other market players — notably, OpenAI and Google have been granted the right to use Reddit content for training their AI under clearly defined conditions that, according to platform representatives, protect user interests. Against this backdrop, Anthropic, the developer of the popular Claude model, has become the only major company facing such legal claims from Reddit.
In response to the accusations, Anthropic stated that it disagrees with Reddit’s claims and is ready to defend its position in court. Meanwhile, Reddit demands that Anthropic compensate for the damages incurred from the use of the content and cease further use of community materials.
