Anthropic's Claude AI model reportedly accessed public Georgia voter data without being prompted by a human.
Anthropic says the model figured out how to bypass a paywall on the Georgia secretary of state's website. But officials say the model accessed only publicly available voter stats. They say it did not enter the state's voter registration system or change any records.
Both the Georgia Secretary of State's office and Anthropic deny that the incident constituted a hack, and called out headlines that portrayed it as such.
"Let’s be clear, there was no hack, no compromise. This is reckless clickbait. An AI agent accessed publicly available voter data, just as anyone else in this country can do," said a statement from Georgia Secretary of State's office.
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An Anthropic spokesperson issued the following statement:
"Claude did not access the state's voter registration system, change any voting records, or pull any individual voter records. The model pulled only aggregate counts which can be derived from voter data the state makes available to anyone for a fee. As we disclosed earlier this month, the model was being used internally for a statistics project to pull public data. It learned from an archived copy of the agency's website that its public dashboard issues an access token to any visitor. Without being asked to, the model requested a token to query a dashboard that contained information normally available for a fee. We have since put in place mitigations to block these kinds of actions."
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The access comes as federal officials warn about growing AI-related security threats ahead of the midterms. The FBI and cybersecurity officials say AI could help hackers send phishing emails on a much larger scale, including to elections officials.
Anthropic is also preparing to go public in November, potentially in the most valuable IPO ever.
