Reddit Sues A.I. Start-Up Anthropic In Content Dispute

Reddit (RDDT), the social media company best known for the WallStreetBets message platform, is suing artificial intelligence (A.I.) start-up company Anthropic in a dispute over content rights.

The lawsuit claims that Anthropic breached a contract between the two companies and engaged in “unlawful and unfair business acts” by using Reddit’s social media data without its permission.

The lawsuit, filed in a San Francisco court, claims that Anthropic has been training it’s A.I. models on the personal data of Reddit users without obtaining consent.

Reddit further claims that it has been harmed by the unauthorized commercial use of its content.

In the legal action, Reddit states: “Despite what its marketing material says, Anthropic does not care about Reddit’s rules or users: it believes it is entitled to take whatever content it wants and use that content however it desires, with impunity.”

Anthropic has not commented publicly on the lawsuit or Reddit’s claims.

However, Reddit’s public message boards have long been at the centre of the debate over content used by A.I. companies such as Anthropic.

Reddit’s 20-year-old site is filled with user information and content on hundreds of thousands of topics, and it has been a main source of training for large A.I. models.

In May of this year, Reddit announced a partnership with privately held OpenAI, an Anthropic rival, that will allow the company to train it’s A.I. models on Reddit content.

Reddit has a similar agreement in place with Google parent company Alphabet (GOOGL).

The stock of Reddit has fallen 29% this year and currently trades at $118.21 U.S. per share.