{"id":926319,"date":"2026-10-09T08:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T08:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/926319\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T08:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T08:28:12","slug":"anthropic-bans-users-from-needless-abusive-or-cruel-behavior-towards-claude-anthropic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/926319\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropic bans users from \u2018needless abusive or cruel behavior\u2019 towards Claude | Anthropic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Anthropic has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/news\/2026-usage-policy-update\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">barred users<\/a> from exhibiting \u201csustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior\u201d toward its models, as the company\u2019s leaders continue to ponder machine consciousness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The Verge <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/ai-artificial-intelligence\/1008100\/anthropic-new-usage-policy-abuse-claude\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">first<\/a> reported the change in policy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">A spokesperson for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/anthropic\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Anthropic<\/a>, which is behind AI chatbot Claude, did not immediately respond to an inquiry about what could be considered \u201cabusive or cruel\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">In an online user policy, the San Francisco-based company noted that its ban would not apply to common user frustrations, model testing or \u201cdark creative themes\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Anthropic\u2019s usage policy previously contained restrictions on abusive conduct.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The company\u2019s large language models have the ability to end a conversation if a user is being persistently harmful. When that feature rolled out last August, the company framed it as a safeguard for AI\u2019s welfare.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">\u201cWe remain highly uncertain about the potential moral status of Claude and other LLMs, now or in the future. However, we take the issue seriously, and alongside our research program we\u2019re working to identify and implement low-cost interventions to mitigate risks to model welfare, in case such welfare is possible. Allowing models to end or exit potentially distressing interactions is one such intervention,\u201d according to its website.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The notion of AI systems being conscious has been highly polarizing in and outside the tech world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/12\/opinion\/artificial-intelligence-anthropic-amodei.html\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a> he cannot rule out the possibility.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Meanwhile, Sam Altman, CEO of rival OpenAI, has appeared averse to the idea.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">\u201cI am very uncomfortable about people trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models, and think it is a real safety issue,\u201d he wrote in an X post, days after the New York Times <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/29\/us\/anthropic-claude-morals-ai.html\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> on Anthropic leaders\u2019 extensive conversations with religious scholars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthropic has barred users from exhibiting \u201csustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior\u201d toward its models, as the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":926320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-926319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/926320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}