Reddit sues Anthropic for allegedly not paying for training data | TechCrunch
Jun 04, 2025 - techcrunch.com
Reddit has filed a lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic, accusing it of using Reddit's data to train AI models without a proper licensing agreement. The complaint, filed in a Northern California court, alleges that Anthropic's actions were unlawful and violated Reddit's user agreement. This lawsuit marks Reddit as the first major tech company to legally challenge an AI model provider over training data practices, joining other publishers like The New York Times and authors like Sarah Silverman in similar legal actions against tech companies for unauthorized use of content. Reddit's chief legal officer, Ben Lee, emphasized that the company will not tolerate the commercial exploitation of Reddit content without compensation or respect for user privacy.
Reddit has existing agreements with AI companies like OpenAI and Google, allowing them to use its data under specific terms that protect user interests. However, Reddit claims that Anthropic ignored its requests and continued to scrape data without authorization. The lawsuit seeks compensatory damages and an injunction to stop Anthropic from using Reddit's content. Reddit also alleges that Anthropic's AI chatbot, Claude, frequently references Reddit communities, further indicating the use of Reddit data. Anthropic has not yet commented on the lawsuit.
Key takeaways:
Reddit is suing Anthropic for allegedly using its data to train AI models without a proper licensing agreement.
Reddit claims Anthropic violated its user agreement and ignored robots.txt files, which signal not to crawl websites.
Reddit has agreements with other AI companies like OpenAI and Google, allowing them to use its data under specific terms.
Reddit seeks compensatory damages and an injunction against Anthropic to stop using its content.
