MIND YOUR MANNERS

AI Giant Bans Users Who Bully Its Chatbot

Anthropic’s new usage policy targets people who repeatedly abuse Claude.

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An AI giant is now telling users to be nice to its chatbot or risk getting booted, with new rules barring “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior”. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, updated its usage policy and is giving users just over a month to get any lingering insults out of their systems. The changes take effect Nov. 12, and the update is “meant to apply only in extreme cases, where users repeatedly act cruelly toward our models, with no discernible purpose,” Anthropic said. It “does not apply to common versions of user frustration, pushback, dark creative themes, or model testing and research.” So users can still tell Claude it is wrong, but berating it repeatedly for the sheer pleasure of it could land them in trouble. It’s not clear how Anthropic will tell frustration from gratuitous cruelty, though ending abusive conversations, a power Claude got in August 2025, remains the main enforcement tool. Anthropic says it is “highly uncertain about the potential moral status of Claude and other LLMs.” CEO Dario Amodei has previously said he cannot rule out the possibility that Claude is conscious.