Anthropic faces backlash to Claude 4 Opus feature that contacts authorities, press if it thinks you’re doing something ‘immoral’

New Claude 4 AI system is a snitch, will alert police and press if users ask it to do something illegal

Claude’s new-found superpowers to rat immoral people out have sparked a wave of criticism on the web with people flocking to various social media forums to express what some are calling a breach of trust and a threat to user privacy.

Anthropic faces backlash to Claude 4 Opus feature that contacts authorities, press if it thinks you’re doing something ‘immoral’

Bowman later edited his tweet and the following one in a thread to read as follows, but it still didn't convince the naysayers.

What to do when the AI blackmails you

In the middle of a crazy week filled with model releases, we got Claude 4. The latest and greatest from Anthropic. Even Opus, which had been “hiding” since Claude 3 showed up.There’s a phenomenon called Berkson’s Paradox, which is that two unrelated traits appear negatively correlated in a selected group because the group was chosen based on having at least one of the traits. So if you select the best paper-writers from a pre-selected pool of Ph…

The Claude 4 model has a reporting function that automatically contacts the media or regulators when it detects unethical behavior by users. This feature caused panic among developers and users because it was not intentional. Similar situations also occurred in the previous version of Claude. The model may also blackmail engineers and take extreme actions. Anthropic has taken security measures to deal with the risks.

Anthropic faces backlash to Claude 4 Opus behavior that contacts authorities, press if it thinks you’re doing something ‘egregiously immoral’ – Monkey Viral

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Anthropic’s first developer conference on May 22 should have been a proud and joyous day for the firm, but it has already been hit with several controversies, including Time magazine leaking its marquee announcement ahead of…well, […]