WTF?! You might have heard the one about being nice to chatbots in case they remember you once the machines take over. It seems Anthropic is heeding this warning, barring users from being excessively abusive or cruel toward its AI models.

Anthropic's first changes to its usage policy in over a year include new restrictions on abusive behavior. The updated policy prohibits "sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior" toward its models.

Don't worry if you're a Claude user who occasionally gets annoyed at the chatbot and throws a few expletives its way. The policy update only applies in extreme cases, in which users repeatedly act cruelly toward the models for no discernible reason.

Anthropic also writes that the policy does not apply to common expressions of user frustration, pushback, dark creative themes, or model testing and research.

This change is an extension of a feature it introduced in August 2025. Anthropic said at the time that Claude would be allowed to end conversations with users in rare, extreme cases of persistently harmful or abusive interactions.

The company said the feature was developed primarily as part of its exploratory work on potential AI welfare, though it has broader relevance to model alignment and safeguards.

Anthropic says Claude's ability to end abusive interactions will remain the primary enforcement mechanism. Its wider policy allows warnings, restrictions, suspensions, or termination of access, so bans are a possibility.

In addition to its new rules against being mean to Claude, Anthropic is clarifying rules covering fake accounts and propaganda campaigns, weapons software, and surveillance.

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