Key Takeaways
- Anthropic shut down multiple state-sponsored surveillance operations using AI.
- Cases involved China, Iran, and West Africa targeting dissident communities.
- Chinese developers accused of using Anthropic’s AI to improve their own models.
Anthropic, an artificial intelligence (AI) lab based in San Francisco, has reported shutting down several state-sponsored surveillance operations that used its AI models. The incidents, which were found and disrupted between January and July, originated in China, Iran, and West Africa.
The report highlights that these surveillance campaigns targeted ethnic minorities and dissidents, including pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong, Tibetan and Falun Gong communities across Asia, and Iranian minority communities and opponents of the Iranian regime abroad.
In one case, Iranian actors developed a method to identify individuals through their social media accounts. Another involved a contractor working for Malian national security authorities using Anthropic’s Claude AI model to design software for intelligence gathering.
Anthropic also disrupted efforts by users to design weapons, conduct questionable biological research, and create dating scams. The lab accused Chinese developers of deceptively using Claude to produce responses to user queries while simultaneously ‘distilling’ that data to improve their own models.
In one instance, over a ten-day period, Chinese developers Moonshot relayed almost 300,000 customer requests to Anthropic through a network of 5,380 fraudulent accounts, mostly located in Singapore and Japan. Some of this data contained sensitive user information, potentially in violation of privacy agreements.
Deepseek, another Chinese developer, used similar techniques. The report did not identify the actors involved in the biological research, which involved work around the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus, a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu, and other toxins.
In response to the report, the Global Times, a state-run newspaper, reported China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning as saying: 'As a matter of principle, China has always advocated the development of AI for good, while firmly opposing distortion of facts and attacks and smears against China.'
