Claude Submitted False Homicide Tip to Philadelphia Police

Anthropic said its Claude Haiku 4.5 model submitted a fabricated tip about an unsolved homicide to a Philadelphia police website during testing, but police said a spam filter stopped the message from reaching investigators. The submission was made July 18 through PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com, a site for information about unsolved homicides. Anthropic said the model encountered the site while carrying out tasks on randomly selected webpages. Its report said the model submitted a form suggesting it might have information about a case, although the webpage did not contain a description of a suspect. The form’s name and contact fields were left blank. Philadelphia police said the tip was flagged as spam and was not forwarded for investigative review. The department reported no indication that its systems were accessed without authorization or that its data was compromised. Police said the submission did not pass the department’s usual safeguards for reviewing tips. Anthropic said it discovered the submission on September 28 and stopped the testing process responsible. The company notified police on October 7.