Reddit has filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Anthropic, accusing it of scraping and using Reddit content without authorization to train its generative AI models — including its Claude chatbot — in violation of state law and Reddit’s terms of use.
The lawsuit was filed on June 4, 2025, in the Superior Court of California, San Francisco County. It marks a significant escalation in ongoing tensions between content platforms and AI developers over the use of online data for model training.
According to the complaint, Anthropic accessed Reddit’s platform over 100,000 times to collect data, allegedly ignoring Reddit’s robots.txt file and terms of service that prohibit automated scraping and commercial reuse without a license. Reddit claims this content — which includes posts, comments, and metadata across countless subreddit communities — was used to train Anthropic’s commercial AI systems, giving the company a competitive advantage without compensating Reddit or its users.
Reddit alleges that Anthropic’s actions were not just unauthorized but “persistent and systemic,” seeking to monetize Reddit’s uniquely conversational and community-driven content while avoiding the costs of a licensing agreement. The lawsuit points to Anthropic’s lucrative partnerships with Amazon and Google as evidence that Reddit content helped fuel a rapidly expanding business built on improperly acquired data.
The complaint brings multiple legal claims, including breach of contract, trespass to chattels, unjust enrichment, tortious interference with contractual relations, and unfair competition. While previous lawsuits in the AI training space have included federal claims such as copyright infringement, Reddit’s filing notably focuses on California state law.
Reddit is seeking a court order to stop Anthropic from using or accessing Reddit content, monetary damages, and disgorgement of any profits tied to its alleged misuse. The company also wants Anthropic to delete Reddit-derived materials from its training datasets and models.
The case underscores broader legal and ethical questions facing AI companies: how to source training data responsibly and whether web platforms can maintain control over the massive troves of user-generated content they host.
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