Reddit has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing the AI startup of scraping millions of user comments from its platform without consent to train its AI chatbot, Claude. The suit, filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco, centers on breach of Reddit’s terms of service rather than copyright infringement.
According to Reddit, Anthropic used automated bots to collect content from the site repeatedly—over 100,000 times—ignoring requests to stop and refusing to enter into a licensing agreement. Reddit alleges this amounted to training Claude on personal user data without consent, violating user protections and site rules.
Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, emphasized the importance of licensing agreements for protecting users’ rights, including content deletion and spam prevention. Reddit has existing licensing deals with other major AI players like Google and OpenAI, which have helped safeguard its content and strengthen its financial standing ahead of its stock market debut.
Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI executives and backed by Amazon and Alphabet, rejected the allegations, stating it will defend itself vigorously. The lawsuit highlights that Claude’s training included some Reddit data, with no knowledge of whether that content had been deleted by users.
Reddit criticized Anthropic’s public portrayal as an AI “white knight,” accusing it of disregarding Reddit’s safeguards and profiting significantly—allegedly tens of billions—from unlicensed user data.
Unlike other recent AI lawsuits, Reddit’s case focuses on breach of terms and unfair competition, not copyright violations. The complaint seeks a court injunction preventing Anthropic from using Reddit data commercially, along with restitution and punitive damages.
The case is registered as Reddit Inc v Anthropic PBC (Case No. CGC-25-524892).
