Reddit has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging that the artificial intelligence startup illegally used Reddit’s data for training its AI models without entering into a formal licensing agreement. According to the legal complaint, which was lodged in a Northern California court on Wednesday, Reddit accuses Anthropic of breaching its user agreement and engaging in unauthorized commercial exploitation of content from the platform.
This lawsuit is significant as it marks one of the first instances where a major technology company directly challenges an AI provider regarding its data sourcing practices. Reddit now joins a growing list of media organizations and creators who have objected legally to unauthorized data use for AI training purposes. High-profile cases have previously involved publishers such as The New York Times, which sued both OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly training their AI systems on the newspaper’s articles without proper authorization or compensation. Additionally, popular comedian Sarah Silverman and numerous authors have taken similar legal actions against companies like Meta for using their literary works for AI training without permissions. In the creative space, musicians and music publishers have increasingly voiced concerns against AI startups that use proprietary audio, video, and visual content without consent.
Ben Lee, Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer, emphasized the company’s stance in a statement, asserting Reddit’s refusal to allow corporations like Anthropic to generate substantial profits from users’ contributions without providing compensation or safeguarding users’ privacy.
Reddit has previously negotiated licensed agreements with other leading AI firms, including OpenAI and Google. Those agreements allow the companies to legitimately utilize Reddit’s vast content to help train AI models under specific privacy and user interest protections outlined by Reddit. Notably, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, holds an 8.7% stake in Reddit and was previously a member of Reddit’s board.
In the legal filing, Reddit alleges it explicitly informed Anthropic that it lacked authorization to scrape data from the social media platform, yet claims Anthropic consistently rebuffed efforts to engage accordingly.
Reddit asserts in its complaint that Anthropic’s automated scrapers deliberately ignored Reddit’s instructions presented through the site’s robots.txt files, a widely respected standard signaling to bots which pages they may and may not access. The company further points to Anthropic’s chatbot, Claude, regularly mentioning Reddit-specific communities and topics, as evidence that Anthropic has used Reddit’s data extensively.
In its lawsuit, Reddit seeks monetary compensation for damages incurred and demands restitution for profits Anthropic gained through the unauthorized data harvesting. Reddit also requests a court-issued injunction prohibiting Anthropic from continuing its alleged unlawful use of Reddit content.
Anthropic has not yet provided a public comment regarding the allegations.
