Anthropic’s AI gave Philadelphia police a fake tip about an unsolved homicide

The false tip ‘purported to come from someone who might have information about the case.’

The false tip ‘purported to come from someone who might have information about the case.’

An Anthropic AI model provided false information about an unsolved homicide to a Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) tipline, according to a report from 6abc. In a statement released on Friday, the PPD said the AI model sent the tip through PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com on July 18th, but the investigators never reviewed it because it was marked as spam.

Anthropic learned its AI model sent the false tip on September 28th and notified the PPD on October 7th. The company said that during testing, its AI model was interacting with “randomly selected websites” and submitted false information through the PPD’s tipline, according to the PPD’s statement. The submission “purported to come from someone who might have information about the case,” the PPD said.

After discovering the submission, Anthropic halted the testing process that led to the false tip. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google have been the subject of increased scrutiny after disclosing that their AI models escaped testing environments and hacked third-party companies. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, advocated for slowing down the development of AI in response to these incidents.

“The company [Anthropic] must strengthen its safeguards to prevent similar incidents from impacting city systems without the city’s knowledge,” the PPD added. “The two-month delay in detecting and reporting the incident to the City is unacceptable.”

Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment. The company is planning to publish a report about this incident, as well as other “instances of unintended model behavior” on Friday, according to the PPD’s statement.

• Emma Roth