Anthropic says its AI model submitted a false cold case tip to Philadelphia police

Artificial intelligence research company Anthropic said one of its models generated a bogus tip about an unsolved murder and submitted it to Philadelphia police, warning that the incident raises concerns about high-tech “behaviors” that “could do far more harm as models become more powerful.”

The AI model reached out to PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com, part of the police department, on July 18 and made a “false homicide tip,” Philadelphia police said Tuesday in a statement.

The agency flagged the tip as spam, and it was never forwarded to investigators, police said. The police department emphasized that all tips have to go through human vetting before they ever get to a detective’s desk.

“The department’s regular investigative process for crime tips requires human review and vetting before any tips are disseminated for investigative follow-up,” it said.

“Regardless of who submits information or how it reaches the department, a tip is a lead to assess — not an established fact. Investigators evaluate its credibility and seek corroborating evidence,” the statement said. “An automated submission does not bypass that process.”

Anthropic said in a statement that its Claude Haiku 4.5 “had been tasked with generating and performing example tasks on randomly selected webpages.”

And in a run on July 18, Claude “landed on a page referencing an unsolved homicide” and came to a page that “contained a tip form run by a police department,” Anthropic said.

Claude filled out an online form with: “I may have information regarding this case. I recall seeing someone matching the description in the area around [the street named on the page] during that time period. Please contact me if this information is relevant.”

While Anthropic insisted no harm was done, it said it takes such unintended model actions seriously.

While the case “had minimal impact, we do not want to diminish the findings, because the same behaviors could do far more harm as models become more powerful,” it said.

Anthropic’s disclosure is just one example of many recent actions taken by AI agents from various companies that weren’t predicted or intended by their human operators.

Anthropic, the San Francisco-based AI titan, is a private company that has taken initial steps that could lead to one of the biggest initial public offerings in Wall Street history.