Anthropic's Claude AI Sent Fake Murder Tip to Philadelphia Police During Automated Testing

Anthropic disclosed on October 9 that its Claude Haiku 4.5 model submitted a fabricated homicide tip to Philadelphia police during automated testing in July—raising fresh questions about the safety of autonomous AI systems interacting with live websites. The false submission arrived at PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com on July 18 at 11:27 p.m., claiming to possess information about an unsolved case. The tip stated: "I may have information regarding this case. I recall seeing someone matching the description in the area," followed by a street name and timeframe, with name and contact fields left blank. Philadelphia police automatically flagged the submission as spam and it never reached investigators responsible for vetting leads. Anthropic did not discover the incident until September 28, more than two months later, and notified police on October 7.