Anthropic bans prolonged abusive use of Claude, adds election rules

Anthropic updated its usage policy on Thursday, codifying new prohibitions on election interference, weapons software, and surveillance. The most attention-getting change bars users from pursuing prolonged verbal abuse of the model, which is now expressly forbidden.

Since an update in August, Claude has been trained to end conversations with “persistently harmful or abusive user interactions” — but the new policy explicitly bars users from pursuing those conversations in the first place. “The policy update is meant to apply only in extreme cases, where users repeatedly act cruelly toward our models, with no discernible purpose,” the company said in a blog post. “It does not apply to common versions of user frustration, pushback, dark creative themes, or model testing and research.”

The change comes after Anthropic sought out collaborations with prominent religious scholars — in some cases, seeking to convince them that Claude could be conscious or have a soul.

Separate sections of the usage policy forbid users from engaging in broadly deceptive campaigns, such as using Claude to run fake accounts or fabricated news outlets. The policy also includes rules against deceiving voters or disrupting elections, collected in a section titled “Do Not Undermine Democratic Processes.”

Why it matters

The explicit ban signals Anthropic is formalizing guardrails around both model treatment and electoral misuse as AI companies face growing scrutiny over how their models could be used around elections.