Philadelphia police says its unsolved murder website received “false homicide tip” from Anthropic AI

Philadelphia police say a “false homicide tip” submitted through the PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com website about an unsolved murder was generated by an Anthropic artificial intelligence model.

The AI submission came through the online platform launched by the Philadelphia Police Department to gather tips about unsolved homicide cases.

Anthropic notified the Philadelphia Police Department of the incident on Oct. 7 and said it plans to publish a report on Friday describing what happened and “other instances of unintended model behavior,” Sergeant Eric Gripp, public information officer for the department, said in a statement shared with CBS News.

“Philadelphia Police are providing this information to the public ahead of that publication in the interests of full government transparency and accountability,” Gripp said.

Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

According to information the company shared with the Philadelphia Police Department, the model was conducting a test with randomly selected websites when it submitted false information to the tip site. The AI model purported to be someone who “might have information about the case,” Gripp said.

The tip was flagged as spam and never reached the unit responsible for investigative vetting, according to the department’s release.

Anthropic told the department that the incident occurred at 11:27 p.m. on July 18, but that it didn’t discover it until Sept. 28. At that point, the company stopped the automated testing process that led to the false tip, Gripp said in the release.

There was no indication the incident involved any “unauthorized access to police systems or a compromise of department data,” he said.