California
Reddit sues AI company Anthropic for allegedly ‘scraping’ user comments to train chatbot Claude
Social media platform Reddit sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic on Wednesday, alleging that it is illegally “scraping” the comments of millions of Reddit users to train its chatbot Claude.
Reddit claims that Anthropic has used automated bots to access Reddit’s content despite being asked not to do so, and “intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent.”
Anthropic said in a statement that it disagreed with Reddit’s claims “and will defend ourselves vigorously.”
Reddit filed the lawsuit Wednesday in California Superior Court in San Francisco, where both companies are based.
“AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data,” said Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, in a statement Wednesday.
Reddit has previously entered licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI and other companies that are paying to be able to train their AI systems on the public commentary of Reddit’s more than 100 million daily users.
Those agreements “enable us to enforce meaningful protections for our users, including the right to delete your content, user privacy protections, and preventing users from being spammed using this content,” Lee said.
The licensing deals also helped the 20-year-old online platform raise money ahead of its Wall Street debut as a publicly traded company last year.
Anthropic was formed by former OpenAI executives in 2021 and its flagship Claude chatbot remains a key competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While OpenAI has close ties to Microsoft, Anthropic’s primary commercial partner is Amazon, which is using Claude to improve its widely used Alexa voice assistant.
Much like other AI companies, Anthropic has relied heavily on websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit that are deep troves of written materials that can help teach an AI assistant the patterns of human language.
In a 2021 paper co-authored by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei — cited in the lawsuit — researchers at the company identified the subreddits, or subject-matter forums, that contained the highest quality AI training data, such as those focused on gardening, history, relationship advice or thoughts people have in the shower.
Anthropic in 2023 argued in a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office that the “way Claude was trained qualifies as a quintessentially lawful use of materials,” by making copies of information to perform a statistical analysis of a large body of data. It is already battling a lawsuit from major music publishers alleging that Claude regurgitates the lyrics of copyrighted songs.
But Reddit’s lawsuit is different from others brought against AI companies because it doesn’t allege copyright infringement. Instead, it focuses on the alleged breach of Reddit’s terms of use, and the unfair competition, it says, was created.
Wisconsin
Jury convicts inmate accused of killing cellmate
GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin man doing time for trying to kill his mother was convicted Wednesday of strangling his cellmate to death.
A jury found Jackson Vogel, 25, guilty of first-degree intentional homicide in connection with the death of 19-year-old Micah Laureano at the Green Bay Correctional Institution last year, WLUK-TV reported.
Vogel told investigators he killed Laureano because Laureano was Black and gay.
Vogel’s attorneys, public defenders Ann Larson and Luke Harrison, didn’t immediately return voicemail messages seeking comment. He faces a mandatory life sentence when he is sentenced on June 27.
He is already serving a 20-year prison term handed down in 2018 for repeatedly stabbing his mother, strangling her and attempting to snap her neck, according to an appellate opinion upholding that conviction.
A guard found Laureano’s body hanging from the top bunk of the cell he shared with Vogel on Aug. 27, according to a criminal complaint. Laureano’s hands and feet were tied together with orange material.
Vogel, who is white, told the guard that he killed Laureano because Laureano was Black and gay, the complaint said. He said he knocked Laureano out, tied his hands and feet and strangled him.
Investigators discovered numerous cut strips of orange cloth around the cell as well as a handwritten note that said, “Kill all humans!” followed by profanities directed at Black people and gay people, according to the complaint.
Laureano was serving a three-year sentence in battery and robbery cases. His mother, Phyllis Laureano, filed a federal lawsuit in February accusing prison officials of failing to protect him from Vogel. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
Green Bay Correctional Institution, a maximum security facility, opened in 1898. Republicans have been calling for years to close the prison along with the Waupun Correctional Institution, another maximum security facility where seven inmates have died since 2023. But concerns over job losses and the cost of building a new prison have stymied any progress on either front.
Maryland
Unsealed records in Abrego Garcia case offer few details that are new, unknown
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the unsealing of several court documents in the lawsuit over Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation, rejecting the Trump administration’s arguments that it would risk national security.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland issued her order after media organizations, including The Associated Press, argued the public has a right to access court records under the First Amendment.
Filings unsealed so far offer little information that’s new or unknown publicly. Xinis described one document as “relatively boilerplate.” It was a request by the Trump administration to temporarily halt discovery, an early phase of a lawsuit where parties share evidence.
“It does not disclose any potentially privileged or otherwise sensitive information for which a compelling government interest outweighs the right to access,” Xinis wrote.
Xinis noted that some documents were public before the court was asked to seal them the next day. Those filings contained a back-and-forth between Abrego Garcia’s attorneys and the U.S. government over efforts to return him from El Salvador.
Trump administration lawyers often objected to answering questions, arguing that they involve state secrets, sensitive diplomatic negotiations and other protected information.
For example, the U.S. attorneys mentioned “appropriate diplomatic discussions with El Salvador.” But they wrote that disclosing the details “could negatively impact any outcome.”
Xinis also ordered the partial release of a transcript from an April 30 court hearing. Some of it will be reacted to protect potentially classified information.
Wednesday’s ruling was unrelated to the Trump administration pending invocation of the state secrets privilege, a legal doctrine often used in military cases. The administration has argued that releasing information about the Abrego Garcia matter in open court — or even to the judge in private – could jeopardize national security.
Xinis is yet to rule on the state secrets claim.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have argued that the Trump administration has done nothing to return the Maryland construction worker. They say the government is invoking the privilege to hide behind the misconduct of mistakenly deporting him and refusing to bring him back.
Abrego Garcia’s deportation violated a U.S. immigration judge’s order in 2019 that shielded Abrego Garcia from expulsion to his native country. The immigration judge determined that Abrego Garcia faced likely persecution by a local Salvadoran gang that terrorized his family.
Abrego Garcia’s American wife sued over his deportation. Xinis ordered his return on April 4. The Supreme Court ruled on April 10 that the administration must work to bring him back.
President Donald Trumptold ABC News in late April that he could retrieve Abrego Garcia with a phone call to El Salvador’s president. But Trump said he wouldn’t do it because Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, an allegation that Abrego Garcia denies and for which he was never charged.
South Carolina
Lawyer for party boat shooting victim says no one checked IDs or for weapons
No one was checking IDs or for weapons before a party boat cruise that ended with a shooting that hurt 11 people in South Carolina over Memorial Day weekend, a lawyer for one of the victims said.
Police have announced a second arrest in the May 25 shooting at a dock in Little River, taking a 16-year-old from North Carolina into custody. He and a 19-year-old man from Illinois have been charged with attempted murder, Horry County Police said.
Officials said 120 people partied on the boat and were leaving on the dock when the shooting happened. Ten people were wounded by gunfire, mostly on the lower parts of their bodies, and one person was hurt by a falling speaker, authorities said.
Investigators have not said how many people they think were firing shots or released details about the weapons used. They said more arrests are possible.
No one appeared to be checking IDs as people got on the boat and there didn’t appear to be any security looking for weapons, said attorney Tyler Bailey, who is representing a shooting victim.
“There was somebody who did pat people down. We’re not sure at this time if he was registered with a security company or if he was just a guy with a shirt on,” Bailey said at a Wednesday news conference on the boat dock.
Bailey said he is doing his own investigation because he wants full justice and accountability.
“We know that there were alcoholic beverages being sold, nobody was checking IDs and you had minors on the boat with firearms,” Bailey said.
Bailey’s client is Jeremy Evans, who was wounded in the ankle and has undergone surgery. He used crutches Wednesday and said he remains in almost unbearable pain. He said six of the 10 people shot were his friends.
“In one single moment my entire world was flipped upside down,” Evans said. “This incident traumatized not only me but the lives of others.”
Little River is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Myrtle Beach. The fishing village is known for its docks and marinas where fishing expeditions, casino boats and several dolphin cruises leave daily.
Reddit sues AI company Anthropic for allegedly ‘scraping’ user comments to train chatbot Claude
Social media platform Reddit sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic on Wednesday, alleging that it is illegally “scraping” the comments of millions of Reddit users to train its chatbot Claude.
Reddit claims that Anthropic has used automated bots to access Reddit’s content despite being asked not to do so, and “intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent.”
Anthropic said in a statement that it disagreed with Reddit’s claims “and will defend ourselves vigorously.”
Reddit filed the lawsuit Wednesday in California Superior Court in San Francisco, where both companies are based.
“AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data,” said Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, in a statement Wednesday.
Reddit has previously entered licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI and other companies that are paying to be able to train their AI systems on the public commentary of Reddit’s more than 100 million daily users.
Those agreements “enable us to enforce meaningful protections for our users, including the right to delete your content, user privacy protections, and preventing users from being spammed using this content,” Lee said.
The licensing deals also helped the 20-year-old online platform raise money ahead of its Wall Street debut as a publicly traded company last year.
Anthropic was formed by former OpenAI executives in 2021 and its flagship Claude chatbot remains a key competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While OpenAI has close ties to Microsoft, Anthropic’s primary commercial partner is Amazon, which is using Claude to improve its widely used Alexa voice assistant.
Much like other AI companies, Anthropic has relied heavily on websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit that are deep troves of written materials that can help teach an AI assistant the patterns of human language.
In a 2021 paper co-authored by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei — cited in the lawsuit — researchers at the company identified the subreddits, or subject-matter forums, that contained the highest quality AI training data, such as those focused on gardening, history, relationship advice or thoughts people have in the shower.
Anthropic in 2023 argued in a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office that the “way Claude was trained qualifies as a quintessentially lawful use of materials,” by making copies of information to perform a statistical analysis of a large body of data. It is already battling a lawsuit from major music publishers alleging that Claude regurgitates the lyrics of copyrighted songs.
But Reddit’s lawsuit is different from others brought against AI companies because it doesn’t allege copyright infringement. Instead, it focuses on the alleged breach of Reddit’s terms of use, and the unfair competition, it says, was created.
Wisconsin
Jury convicts inmate accused of killing cellmate
GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin man doing time for trying to kill his mother was convicted Wednesday of strangling his cellmate to death.
A jury found Jackson Vogel, 25, guilty of first-degree intentional homicide in connection with the death of 19-year-old Micah Laureano at the Green Bay Correctional Institution last year, WLUK-TV reported.
Vogel told investigators he killed Laureano because Laureano was Black and gay.
Vogel’s attorneys, public defenders Ann Larson and Luke Harrison, didn’t immediately return voicemail messages seeking comment. He faces a mandatory life sentence when he is sentenced on June 27.
He is already serving a 20-year prison term handed down in 2018 for repeatedly stabbing his mother, strangling her and attempting to snap her neck, according to an appellate opinion upholding that conviction.
A guard found Laureano’s body hanging from the top bunk of the cell he shared with Vogel on Aug. 27, according to a criminal complaint. Laureano’s hands and feet were tied together with orange material.
Vogel, who is white, told the guard that he killed Laureano because Laureano was Black and gay, the complaint said. He said he knocked Laureano out, tied his hands and feet and strangled him.
Investigators discovered numerous cut strips of orange cloth around the cell as well as a handwritten note that said, “Kill all humans!” followed by profanities directed at Black people and gay people, according to the complaint.
Laureano was serving a three-year sentence in battery and robbery cases. His mother, Phyllis Laureano, filed a federal lawsuit in February accusing prison officials of failing to protect him from Vogel. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
Green Bay Correctional Institution, a maximum security facility, opened in 1898. Republicans have been calling for years to close the prison along with the Waupun Correctional Institution, another maximum security facility where seven inmates have died since 2023. But concerns over job losses and the cost of building a new prison have stymied any progress on either front.
Maryland
Unsealed records in Abrego Garcia case offer few details that are new, unknown
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the unsealing of several court documents in the lawsuit over Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation, rejecting the Trump administration’s arguments that it would risk national security.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland issued her order after media organizations, including The Associated Press, argued the public has a right to access court records under the First Amendment.
Filings unsealed so far offer little information that’s new or unknown publicly. Xinis described one document as “relatively boilerplate.” It was a request by the Trump administration to temporarily halt discovery, an early phase of a lawsuit where parties share evidence.
“It does not disclose any potentially privileged or otherwise sensitive information for which a compelling government interest outweighs the right to access,” Xinis wrote.
Xinis noted that some documents were public before the court was asked to seal them the next day. Those filings contained a back-and-forth between Abrego Garcia’s attorneys and the U.S. government over efforts to return him from El Salvador.
Trump administration lawyers often objected to answering questions, arguing that they involve state secrets, sensitive diplomatic negotiations and other protected information.
For example, the U.S. attorneys mentioned “appropriate diplomatic discussions with El Salvador.” But they wrote that disclosing the details “could negatively impact any outcome.”
Xinis also ordered the partial release of a transcript from an April 30 court hearing. Some of it will be reacted to protect potentially classified information.
Wednesday’s ruling was unrelated to the Trump administration pending invocation of the state secrets privilege, a legal doctrine often used in military cases. The administration has argued that releasing information about the Abrego Garcia matter in open court — or even to the judge in private – could jeopardize national security.
Xinis is yet to rule on the state secrets claim.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have argued that the Trump administration has done nothing to return the Maryland construction worker. They say the government is invoking the privilege to hide behind the misconduct of mistakenly deporting him and refusing to bring him back.
Abrego Garcia’s deportation violated a U.S. immigration judge’s order in 2019 that shielded Abrego Garcia from expulsion to his native country. The immigration judge determined that Abrego Garcia faced likely persecution by a local Salvadoran gang that terrorized his family.
Abrego Garcia’s American wife sued over his deportation. Xinis ordered his return on April 4. The Supreme Court ruled on April 10 that the administration must work to bring him back.
President Donald Trumptold ABC News in late April that he could retrieve Abrego Garcia with a phone call to El Salvador’s president. But Trump said he wouldn’t do it because Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, an allegation that Abrego Garcia denies and for which he was never charged.
South Carolina
Lawyer for party boat shooting victim says no one checked IDs or for weapons
No one was checking IDs or for weapons before a party boat cruise that ended with a shooting that hurt 11 people in South Carolina over Memorial Day weekend, a lawyer for one of the victims said.
Police have announced a second arrest in the May 25 shooting at a dock in Little River, taking a 16-year-old from North Carolina into custody. He and a 19-year-old man from Illinois have been charged with attempted murder, Horry County Police said.
Officials said 120 people partied on the boat and were leaving on the dock when the shooting happened. Ten people were wounded by gunfire, mostly on the lower parts of their bodies, and one person was hurt by a falling speaker, authorities said.
Investigators have not said how many people they think were firing shots or released details about the weapons used. They said more arrests are possible.
No one appeared to be checking IDs as people got on the boat and there didn’t appear to be any security looking for weapons, said attorney Tyler Bailey, who is representing a shooting victim.
“There was somebody who did pat people down. We’re not sure at this time if he was registered with a security company or if he was just a guy with a shirt on,” Bailey said at a Wednesday news conference on the boat dock.
Bailey said he is doing his own investigation because he wants full justice and accountability.
“We know that there were alcoholic beverages being sold, nobody was checking IDs and you had minors on the boat with firearms,” Bailey said.
Bailey’s client is Jeremy Evans, who was wounded in the ankle and has undergone surgery. He used crutches Wednesday and said he remains in almost unbearable pain. He said six of the 10 people shot were his friends.
“In one single moment my entire world was flipped upside down,” Evans said. “This incident traumatized not only me but the lives of others.”
Little River is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Myrtle Beach. The fishing village is known for its docks and marinas where fishing expeditions, casino boats and several dolphin cruises leave daily.
