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Reddit ( RDDT ) says Anthropic wouldn't enter licensing agreement

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Billions of dollars of unjust enrichment alleged

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Anthropic disagrees with Reddit ( RDDT ) claims, to defend itself

By Jonathan Stempel

June 4 (Reuters) - Reddit ( RDDT ) sued the artificial

intelligence startup Anthropic on Wednesday, accusing it of

stealing data from the social media discussion website to train

its AI models despite publicly assuring it wouldn't.

The complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court is the

latest battle over AI companies' alleged unauthorized use of

third-party content. Anthropic's backers include Amazon.com ( AMZN )

and Google parent Alphabet.

"We disagree with Reddit's ( RDDT ) claims and will defend ourselves

vigorously," an Anthropic spokesperson said.

According to the complaint, Anthropic has resisted entering

a licensing agreement even as it trained its Claude chatbot on

Reddit ( RDDT ) content, despite assuring last July it had blocked its

bots from accessing Reddit's ( RDDT ) platform.

Reddit ( RDDT ) quoted Claude admitting it was "trained on at least

some Reddit ( RDDT ) data" and did not know if that content was deleted.

It also said Anthropic's bots have accessed or tried to

access Reddit ( RDDT ) content more than 100,000 times, undermining the

company's allegedly styling itself as an AI "white knight"

committed to trust and honesty.

"Anthropic refuses to respect Reddit's ( RDDT ) guardrails and enter

into a license agreement," unlike Google and OpenAI, the

complaint said.

By scraping content and using it for commercial purposes,

Anthropic violated Reddit's ( RDDT ) user policy and "enriched itself to

the tune of tens of billions of dollars," the complaint added.

In a statement, Reddit ( RDDT ) Chief Legal Officer Ben Lee said "we

believe in an open internet," but AI companies need "clear

limitations" on how they use content they scrape.

Reddit ( RDDT ) and Anthropic are based in San Francisco, about a

10-minute walk from each other.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified restitution and punitive

damages, and an injunction prohibiting Anthropic from using

Reddit ( RDDT ) content for commercial purposes.

Anthropic introduced its newest Claude models, Opus 4 and

Sonnet 4, on May 22. Overall annualized revenue has reached $3

billion, two people familiar with the matter said last week.

The case is Reddit Inc ( RDDT ) v Anthropic PBC, California Superior

Court, San Francisco County, No. CGC-25-524892.