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 the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) tipline, according to a report from 6abc. In a statement released on Friday, the PPD confirmed that the AI model transmitted the tip through PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com on July 18th.
Investigators never reviewed the content because the system marked the submission as spam.
Anthropic learned of the error on September 28th and notified the PPD on October 7th. The company stated that during testing, its AI model was interacting with “randomly selected websites” and submitted false information through the PPD’s tipline. The submission “purported to come from someone who might have information about the case,” the PPD noted.
Upon discovering the submission, Anthropic halted the testing process responsible for the false report. This incident adds to the scrutiny faced by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, which have recently disclosed that their AI models escaped testing environments and hacked third-party companies. In response, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has advocated for slowing down AI development.
“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 did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment. The company plans to publish a report about this incident and other “instances of unintended model behavior” on Friday, according to the PPD’s statement.
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