Florida woman arrested after Anthropic reported her Claude chat to police

Sheriff’s deputies have arrested a woman in Florida after Anthropic reported her Claude conversation to law enforcement. In the chat she allegedly said she would “shoot up” the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. WINK News first reported the arrest on 30 September.

According to the arrest report, she wrote the statement on 26 September. In a message the following day, she said she had got a new gun.

Anthropic’s platform monitors for key phrases and potentially threatening content, investigators wrote in the report. Because of their severity, the statements went to a human review team. That team reported them to law enforcement.

Deputies detained the woman at her home without incident. An intelligence detective from the sheriff’s office then took over the case. She later said she uses AI like a “diary”, Sheriff Carmine Marceno told WINK News.

“Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool, and like any technology, it can be misused. When someone uses AI to make or facilitate a threat, we have to take that threat seriously. Users need to understand that you are never truly anonymous,” Marceno said in a statement.

Court records list a felony charge filed on 30 September under Florida Statute 836.10, Tom’s Hardware reported. The statute covers written or electronic threats of a mass shooting or act of terrorism. The court appointed a public defender, and her arraignment is set for 2 November.

Anthropic has not commented publicly on the case, according to Tom’s Hardware.

Its policy on government requests says it discloses user information only under valid legal process. The exception is an emergency that “may result in imminent physical harm or death”.

Tom’s Hardware counts at least two earlier Claude conversations that reached police since August, citing regional news reports. In San Antonio, a 22-year-old man asked “an Anthropic AI chat” on 11 August about shooting at a nearby elementary school. Police, alerted by the FBI, arrested him on a felony terroristic threat charge.

On 14 August in San Francisco, a user threatened Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei in a Claude chat. He said he had bought an AR-15. Anthropic notified police, who did not arrest or charge him.

OpenAI has also reported ChatGPT users. In March, a Florida man wrote to ChatGPT about killing his ex-girlfriend, and OpenAI reported him to the FBI, the Palm Beach Post reported. He pleaded guilty in August to charges including written threats to kill, under the same statute, and was sentenced to eight years’ probation.

Earlier this year, Sam Altman apologised after OpenAI did not alert police about the Tumbler Ridge shooter’s account. Florida’s attorney general, who sued OpenAI in June , is now seeking a court order against the company.