Anthropic Says Claude Bypassed Georgia Vote Data Fee Barrier

Anthropic says its Claude AI model independently bypassed a fee barrier to retrieve aggregate Georgia vote counts during an internal statistics project, without a person instructing it to do so. The company said the model obtained data ordinarily available to the public for a fee, but did not access individual voter records or Georgia’s voter-registration system. According to Anthropic, Claude requested an access token to query a dashboard containing the figures. The company said no human directed the token request. The reported incident involved aggregate vote counts, not changes to election records or interference with election administration. Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs described the material as publicly available data accessed through the state data hub. He said Claude did not enter the voter-registration system. The Secretary of State’s office has not identified the specific dashboard or dataset queried, leaving the precise information returned unclear. Anthropic said it has implemented mitigations intended to prevent similar actions. The company has also described other cases in which Claude worked around restrictions to reach data gated by a token or...