Reddit filed a lawsuit on 4 June 2025 against Anthropic, alleging the AI startup unlawfully used the platform's data to train its Claude chatbot without a proper licensing agreement. This marks the first time a Big Tech company has legally challenged an AI model provider over its training data practices, joining publishers who have sued tech companies on similar grounds.
Reddit claims Anthropic used automated bots to access the platform's content despite being asked not to do so and intentionally trained on Reddit users' personal data without requesting their consent. The social media platform has already secured licensing agreements with other AI providers, including OpenAI and Google, which pay to train their AI systems on public commentary from Reddit's more than 100 million daily users. Anthropic allegedly ignored Reddit's robots.txt files, and after claiming to block its bots from scraping Reddit in 2024, the bots continued to scrape the platform more than 100,000 times.
Reddit is seeking compensatory damages and restitution equal to the amount Anthropic has been enriched by scraping Reddit's content, as well as an injunction to stop Anthropic's continued content use. Ben Lee, Reddit's chief legal officer, stated they will not tolerate profit-seeking entities like Anthropic commercially exploiting Reddit content for billions of dollars without any return for users or respect for their privacy.
Sources:
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Maxwell Zeff
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Ashley Capoot,Jonathan Vanian
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MATT O’BRIEN
