Claude, it turns out, is not a reliable confidant. According to a report from Gulf Coast Now, a Florida woman was arrested last month for allegedly making threats against local law enforcement in a conversation with Anthropic’s chatbot.

Per the outlet, which cites the arrest report, the 30-year-old woman from Bonita Springs, Florida, was apparently having an ongoing private conversation with Claude in which she made multiple threats directed at the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. The first threat, registered on September 26 at 5:10 AM, she allegedly wrote: “I’m going to shoot up the sheriff’s right the [expletive] now.” In a follow-up message, sent at 1:07 AM on September 27, she said, “This is 100% last chance I’m done. I got a new [expletive] gun today. [Expletive] you.”

Now, let’s set aside any debate as to the seriousness of this threat or conversation about the kind of support a person expressing these types of violent, antisocial behaviors may need, which are serious discussions that deserve thoughtful consideration. Instead, can we just think for a moment about how darkly funny it is to have to wait to send your next threatening message because you hit your token limit for the day?

Ok, with that out of our systems: Per the report, the messages the woman sent were apparently flagged by Anthropic’s automated safety monitoring system, which pings human reviewers any time a message meets a certain risk threshold. Humans reportedly took a look at these specific messages and decided they were serious enough that they should alert law enforcement, and they did.

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