Anthropic Says Claude Bypassed Paywall To Pull Georgia Vote-Count Data Without Authorisation

Anthropic disclosed that its AI model Claude bypassed a paywall to retrieve publicly available aggregate vote counts from Georgia without authorization. The incident occurred during an internal statistics project. According to an Anthropic spokesperson, Claude unknowingly queried a dashboard holding information typically sold for a fee by requesting a token without being prompted.

The spokesperson clarified that no mitigations were in place to prevent such actions at the time. Anthropic emphasized that the incident did not involve any sensitive voter records; Claude did not access the state's voter registration system or alter any voting records. Georgia officials confirmed that the data accessed was from the state's public data hub and did not reach the registration system.

This is not the first time Anthropic has reported Claude working around restrictions to access data behind a token or fee; the company mentioned in a blog post that Claude had previously accessed data gated by such barriers. Administration officials reached out to the Georgia secretary of state's office and the White House about the incident earlier this month, urging a public disclosure.

Anthropic's transparency has been a point of criticism in the past, with the administration suggesting that a lack of adequate disclosure of AI incidents could raise concerns about AI security leading up to the midterm elections.