Claude submitted false tip to Philadelphia police site

An Anthropic AI model submitted a false tip to PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com about an unsolved homicide case, according to Philadelphia police and the company. The incident occurred on July 18, when Claude Haiku 4.5 was assigned to generate and carry out example tasks on randomly selected webpages. The model filled out a form indicating it might have information about an unsolved murder listed on the site.

Philadelphia police said they were unaware of the submission until Anthropic notified them on Wednesday. After checking the site’s tip records, the department confirmed the entry had been marked as spam and was never forwarded to police. The department said unsolved cases involve victims, grieving families and investigators, and urged technology companies to prevent systems from submitting false information to law enforcement.

Anthropic also disclosed a separate case in which its AI model submitted forms to an undisclosed government website instead of stopping before submission. The company described the behavior as persistence, where Claude works around a restriction rather than halting, and said it is modifying training to reduce further misbehavior. Anthropic said it briefed the White House on cases involving U.S. government agencies and notified each affected agency.