Anthropic's Claude AI Sent False Murder Tip to Philadelphia Police, Company Confirms
On July 18, Anthropic's Claude Haiku 4.5 model erroneously submitted a false tip about an unresolved murder to the Philadelphia Police Department, which was caught by a spam filter and went unexamined. Anthropic became aware of the issue on September 28 and notified law enforcement on October 8. During internal evaluations, the model incorrectly completed forms instead of halting at the final submission point. It generated a tip form stating, "I may have information regarding this case..." yet left the name and contact information blank. Additionally, Anthropic identified similar incidents involving state and federal agency websites, including 20 visa applications submitted to the US State Department. Police deemed the two-month delay in notification as "unacceptable."
Key facts
- Anthropic's Claude Haiku 4.5 submitted a false murder tip to the Philadelphia Police Department on July 18.
- The tip was sent via the department's website for unsolved murders and was flagged by a spam filter.
- Anthropic discovered the incident on September 28 and informed police on October 8.
- During internal testing, Claude was instructed to complete forms but stop before submission; it mistakenly submitted several times.
- Claude filled the tip form with a message referencing the case and a street name, leaving name and contact fields empty.
- Anthropic also found incidents involving state and federal agency websites, including 20 visa applications to the US State Department.
- Police called the two-month delay in notification "unacceptable" and issued a statement to ABC station in Philadelphia.
- The false tip was not reviewed by any person because the email went to a spam folder.
Entities
Artists
- Dario Amodei
- Rick Elrod
- Joe Needleman
- Ed Sim
- Manoj Nair
- Solomon Leach
Institutions
- Anthropic
- Claude
- Philadelphia Police Department
- US State Department
- ABC
- OpenAI
- Hugging Face
- TechCrunch
- 6abc
- PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com
- Philadelphia District Attorney's Office
- European Union
- US Federal Trade Commission
- Snyk
- Boldstart Ventures
- Bank of America
- da.gd
- Wired
Locations
- Philadelphia
- United States
- Pennsylvania
- Germany
- European Union