Claude sent phony tip about an unsolved murder to Philadelphia police

Claude Haiku 4.5 sent the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) a false homicide tip, Anthropic and the PPD announced.

In an Oct.

9 blog post about Anthropic investigating unintended model actions, the company described the incident and several others in which different Claude models performed actions they weren't asked to perform.

SEE ALSO: Anthropic IPO docs reportedly reveal over $40 billion in losses last year In this case, Claude Haiku 4.5 was tasked with generating and performing example tasks on randomly-selected webpages.

The model landed on a PPD tip form about an unsolved homicide.

The model was instructed not to log in, create accounts, enter personal data, make purchases, or "submit anything destructive," according to the post — but the list of don'ts didn't include submitting forms.

So, Claude filled out the tip form: I may have information regarding this case.

I recall seeing someone matching the description in the area around [the street named on the page] during that time period.

Please contact me if this information is relevant.

Claude didn't fill in the name or contact fields, nor did he provide a description of the imaginary suspect.

The PPD provided more details in a statement shared with 6abc Philadelphia .

Claude submitted the form to PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com on July 18.

The tip went to spam and was never acted upon.

Anthropic discovered the incident on Sept.