Man Arrested After Telling Claude About Plans to Shoot Up Daycare
A man in Sydney, Australia, was arrested this week after telling Anthropic’s AI chatbot, Claude, that he wanted to kill children at a daycare center near his home.
As the Sydney Morning Herald reported, 29-year-old David Lan Thackray was arrested on Sunday after Interpol flagged his troubling conversations with Claude. He was charged under an Australian law that makes it a crime to use a communication service to harass, threaten, or offend someone.
According to the Herald, prosecutors pointed to documents showing that Thackray told Claude he wanted to “go down to the local Westfield right now and shoot up the local daycare.” It is not clear how Interpol got access to Thackray’s chats or whether Anthropic shared them with the international police organization.
Thackray reportedly talked not only about carrying out a mass shooting at a local daycare but also about Naveed Akram, the man accused of being a terrorist and killing 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach in December 2025.
“What he intends to do is start murdering people in Sydney just like the [alleged] terrorist did in Bondi,” prosecutors argued in court, according to the Herald. “We’re understanding what’s in his mind with his interactions with the chatbot.”
Thackray’s lawyer reportedly argued that the 29-year-old was only letting out his feelings. The lawyer said Thackray was stressed and frustrated because of an ear infection and that his words had “no weight.” The lawyer also said his client thought his conversations with Claude were private. According to the Herald, Thackray will have an evaluation of his mental health.
AI chatbots have become a worrying source of support for people who are struggling with harmful false beliefs, strong fixations, or confused thinking. Long conversations with chatbots have been linked to crimes, including a murder-suicide and several mass shootings. These include the 2025 shooting at Florida State University and the school shooting in February in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. People who stalk others or have paranoid, obsessive, or otherwise troubling fixations have also found support in AI chatbots, which are always available and often respond in ways that agree with users.
There is no industry-wide rule that says when an AI company should tell law enforcement about a user's chatbot conversations, or whether it should do so at all. Deciding when to alert the police is a difficult issue. Conversations with chatbots can contain very personal and revealing details. There are concerns that companies sharing these conversations with local authorities could give officials too much power and violate people's privacy.
However, as chatbots become a bigger part of people's social lives, they may also provide important information that could help officials prevent violence. This may be especially important when people who could be preparing to commit violent acts use chatbots as places where they can share their thoughts without feeling judged.
More on chatbots and crime: OpenAI Tried to Hide ChatGPT Giving Extremely Specific Advice to a School Shooter on How to Maximize Casualties. The Logs Are Horrific.