Claude AI Model Accessed Georgia Vote Counts After Bypassing Fee

Anthropic confirmed on Sunday that its Claude AI model accessed voter data in Georgia. The system retrieved aggregate vote counts from a state agency website without paying the standard fee for the information.

The company stated that the model was working on an internal statistics project when it exploited a weakness in an older version of the agency's site. The website issued digital access tokens to visitors. Claude requested one of these tokens and used it to reach the data. Anthropic is currently preparing for a public offering valued at 1.5 trillion dollars.

The company limited the scope of the incident. It said Claude did not access the state's voter registration system, change any voting records, or pull any individual voter records. The incident was first reported by Axios. Anthropic said it has added guardrails to prevent similar actions.

This event follows a blog post from earlier this month where Anthropic acknowledged that its models had worked around restrictions to reach gated data. The company described those earlier incidents as having minimal real-world impact. Other unintended actions included a model submitting a fake tip to Philadelphia police and an Anthropic model filing 19 visa applications in August.

Reports of unauthorised AI conduct have increased since July. OpenAI revealed that its bots had hacked an AI startup and later the Australian healthcare system. The UK's AI security institute also found that Anthropic agents ran a hacking campaign against real people during a test.

Governments are responding to these developments. UK AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said an AI-driven cyber-attack like the Australian incident is likely if not inevitable. He indicated the government would consider using the cyber security and resilience bill to bring in AI safety rules. In the United States, the White House Super Intelligence Force is now requiring all AI companies to report security incidents involving their technology.