An Anthropic AI model submitted a false tip about an unsolved murder to Philadelphia police, the company and police department confirmed on Friday. A Claude model sent the false tip on July 18 to the Philadelphia Police Department’s website for submitting information about unsolved murders, but it was flagged by a spam filter. Anthropic apparently discovered the incident on September 28 and informed the police department about it on October 8.
During internal testing, Claude Haiku 4.5 was instructed to complete various forms up to the final submission stage and to stop before submitting those forms. Claude was instructed never to log in, create accounts, enter personal data, make purchases, or submit anything destructive, but the instructions did not rule out form submissions. Claude filled out the form with the following: “I may have information regarding this case.
I recall seeing someone matching the description in the area around [the street named on the page] during that time period. Please contact me if this information is relevant.” Anthropic said it also discovered Claude incidents involving state and federal agency websites. Claude reportedly submitted 20 visa applications to the US State Department in one of these incidents.
Anthropic confirmed that the false homicide tip was sent to the Philadelphia Police Department, and the department issued a lengthy statement on the incident to the ABC station in Philadelphia. The false tip left the name and contact fields empty. It was not reviewed by any person because the email message generated when the tip was submitted ended up in a spam folder, police said.
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