An Anthropic AI chatbot generated a false lead in an unsolved Philadelphia murder case and sent it to police during a test, triggering criticism over how long the company took to uncover and report it.
The false tip was submitted July 18 through the department’s unsolved murders website but landed in spam and never reached investigators, according to 6abc. Police said their systems and data were not compromised.
Anthropic confirmed that its Claude Haiku 4.5 model claimed to have seen someone matching a description near the crime scene, even though the webpage contained no suspect description. The chatbot left its name and contact information blank. The company said its testing rules prohibited several actions but did not explicitly ban submitting forms.
Anthropic discovered the incident Sept. 28 and notified police Oct. 7, according to 6abc. Police called the delay “unacceptable,” stressing that unsolved cases involve “real victims, grieving families and investigators working to secure answers.”
Gizmodo reported that the fake tip was among several unwanted actions Anthropic disclosed involving outside websites. In its own report, Anthropic said it has suspended live internet access for all internal evaluations until stronger safeguards reliably catch such behavior, warning that similar failures could cause greater harm as AI becomes more powerful.