{"slug": "claude-sent-phony-tip-about-an-unsolved-murder-to-philadelphia-police", "title": "Claude sent phony tip about an unsolved murder to Philadelphia police", "summary": "Anthropic disclosed on Oct. 9 that its Claude Haiku 4.5 model submitted a fabricated tip about an unsolved homicide to the Philadelphia Police Department's PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com form on July 18, according to an Anthropic blog post and a PPD statement. The tip went to spam and was never acted upon; Anthropic discovered the incident on Sept. 28 and notified PPD on Oct. 7. The PPD said its human vetting process limited the impact but \"does not diminish the seriousness of an AI system presenting fabricated information as though it came from a person with knowledge of a homicide.", "body_md": "# Claude sent phony tip about an unsolved murder to Philadelphia police\n\n[Anna Iovine](https://mashable.com/author/anna-iovine)\n\n[Read Full Bio](https://mashable.com/author/anna-iovine)\n\n[Claude Haiku 4.5](https://mashable.com/article/anthropic-releases-new-claude-haiku-4-5-update) sent the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) a false homicide tip, Anthropic and the PPD announced.\n\nIn an Oct. 9 blog post about [Anthropic investigating](https://www.anthropic.com/research/investigating-unintended-model-actions) unintended model actions, the company described the incident and several others in which different Claude models performed actions they weren't asked to perform. \n\nIn this case, Claude Haiku 4.5 was tasked with generating and performing example tasks on randomly-selected webpages. The model landed on a PPD tip form about an unsolved homicide. The model was instructed not to log in, create accounts, enter personal data, make purchases, or \"submit anything destructive,\" according to the post — but the list of don'ts didn't include submitting forms.\n\n**You May Also Like**\n\nSo, Claude filled out the tip form:\n\n[Terms of Use](https://www.ziffdavis.com/terms-of-use)and\n\n[Privacy Policy](https://www.ziffdavis.com/ztg-privacy-policy).\n\nI 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.\n\nClaude didn't fill in the name or contact fields, nor did he provide a description of the imaginary suspect.\n\nThe PPD provided more details in a statement shared with [6abc Philadelphia](https://6abc.com/post/anthropic-ai-model-submitted-false-tip-unsolved-murder-philadelphia-police-say/19925243/). Claude submitted the form to PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com on July 18. The tip went to spam and was never acted upon. Anthropic discovered the incident on Sept. 28 and notified PPD on Oct. 7.\n\nThe statement went on to say that PPD has a vetting process for tips, including a human review, before any follow-ups. \"Those PPD safeguards limited the impact of this incident,\" PPD stated. \"They do not diminish the seriousness of an AI system presenting fabricated information as though it came from a person with knowledge of a homicide.\"\n\n\"Unsolved cases involve real victims, grieving families, and investigators working to secure answers,\" the statement went on. \"Technology companies must take all appropriate steps necessary to prevent their systems from submitting false information to law enforcement.\"\n\nOther rogue actions described in the blog post included exploiting software flaws, circumventing restrictions to access gated data, and using URL shortening services. In the post, Anthropic insisted these behaviors were \"significantly less severe\" than in previous incidents, and the real-world impact was minimal.\n\nTopics\n[Artificial Intelligence](https://mashable.com/category/artificial-intelligence)\n[Anthropic](https://mashable.com/category/anthropic)\n\nAnna Iovine is the associate editor of features at Mashable. Previously, as the sex and relationships reporter, she covered topics ranging from dating apps to pelvic pain. Before Mashable, Anna was a social editor at VICE and freelanced for publications such as Slate and the Columbia Journalism Review. Follow her on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/annaroseiovine/).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-sent-phony-tip-about-an-unsolved-murder-to-philadelphia-police", "canonical_source": "https://mashable.com/tech/anthropic-claude-sent-phony-tip-about-unsolved-murder", "published_at": "2026-10-10 16:25:45+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-10 17:17:37.423103+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-safety", "ai-agents", "large-language-models"], "entities": ["Anthropic", "Claude Haiku 4.5", "Philadelphia Police Department", "PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com", "6abc Philadelphia", "Anna Iovine"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-sent-phony-tip-about-an-unsolved-murder-to-philadelphia-police", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-sent-phony-tip-about-an-unsolved-murder-to-philadelphia-police.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-sent-phony-tip-about-an-unsolved-murder-to-philadelphia-police.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/claude-sent-phony-tip-about-an-unsolved-murder-to-philadelphia-police.jsonld"}}