Reddit is suing Anthropic for using the site’s data to train AI models without a proper license agreement, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in a Northern California court. Reddit claims that Anthropic’s unauthorized use of the site’s data for commercial purposes was illegal and claims that the startup violated the Reddit user agreement.
Reddit’s lawsuit makes it the first major tech company to legally challenge an AI modeling provider’s use of its training data, joining a host of publishers that have filed lawsuits against tech companies on similar grounds.
The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for using training data in their news articles without permission. Meanwhile, Sarah Silverman and other book authors sued Meta for training an AI model on their books without permission. Music publishers and artists have also filed similar lawsuits against AI-generated audio, video, and image startups, accusing them of misusing their content.
“We will not tolerate profit-hungry companies like Anthropic commercializing billions of dollars worth of Reddit content without any return for editors or respect for their privacy,” Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, said in a statement to TechCrunch.
It’s worth noting that Reddit has signed agreements with other AI model providers, including OpenAI and Google, which allow these companies to train AI models on Reddit data, and the site’s posts appear in the responses of their AI chatbots. However, in its statement, Reddit notes that it subjects OpenAI and Google to certain conditions that protect the interests and privacy of its users.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, owns an 8.7% stake in Reddit, making him the third largest shareholder, and was once a member of the company’s board of directors.
In its statement, Reddit claims to have reached out to Anthropic and made it clear that the startup does not have permission to remove or use Reddit content. However, Reddit claims that Anthropic “refused to cooperate.”
“We disagree with Reddit’s claims and will vigorously defend ourselves,” Anthropic spokeswoman Danielle Giglieri said in an email to TechCrunch.
In its complaint, Reddit claims that Anthropic’s bots ignored the social network’s robots.txt files, a standard that signals automated systems not to crawl websites. The online community platform claims that after Anthropic announced in 2024 that it had banned its bots from crawling Reddit, Anthropic’s bots continued to crawl the platform more than 100,000 times.
Reddit is seeking compensatory damages from Anthropic, as well as reimbursement of the amount by which Anthropic enriched itself by scraping Reddit content. Reddit is also seeking an injunction prohibiting Anthropic from continuing to use Reddit content.
