Anthropic says its A.I. model submitted a false cold case tip to Philadelphia police

Artificial intelligence research company Anthropic says 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 A.I. model reached out to PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com on July 18 and made a “false homicide tip,” the Philadelphia Police Department said Tuesday in a statement.

The tip, though, was flagged as spam by the agency and was never forwarded to investigators, police said. The department emphasized that all tips have to go through human vetting before ever getting an 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,” the department 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’s Claude Haiku 4.5 “had been tasked with generating and performing example tasks on randomly selected webpages,” according to a company statement.

And in one 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, the company said it takes these kind of unintended model actions seriously.

While this 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,” the company said.

The disclosure from Anthropic shows 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 A.I. 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.

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