Did AI get access to GA voting data? Claude makes unauthorized move
Irene WrightWeeks before Election Day, an artificial intelligence (AI) program made by Anthropic accessed voter information in Georgia without permission, according to state officials and the company.
Claude, Anthropic's group of large language models and AI assistants, accessed the Georgia Secretary of State's election data hub. The site contains public election information, including voter turnout and data about voters' race, age and gender.
"This was publicly available data accessed through our data hub. It did not get into the voter registration system," Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said in a statement to USA TODAY.
Here's what we know.
Claude was not allowed to search the data, company says
The Secretary of State's Office said Anthropic's AI bot accessed the Georgia election data hub and viewed only information that was already public. Anyone who visits the Secretary of State's website can see the same information.
The bot did not access voter files or Georgia's voter registration system.
"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," an Anthropic spokesperson told FOX Business.
USA TODAY has contacted Anthropic for more information.
Anthropic said Claude was working on an internal statistics project when it accessed an older version of the Georgia website and got past a paywall, which normally limits access to paid users.
"Without being asked to, the model requested a token to query a dashboard that contained information normally available for a fee," the spokesperson told the outlet. "We have since put in place mitigations to block these kinds of actions."
The company said a report in early October had already revealed the search, but the organizations involved were not publicly named for security reasons.
Anthropic adds voting information to Claude
The unauthorized access happened as Anthropic announced plans to add more election information to Claude.
"Today, conversations that touch broadly on politics, public policy or social issues account for about 5.75% of all conversations in the United States on Claude.ai, our consumer app," the company said in a statement on Oct. 14. It said this figure was calculated using about 250,000 conversations.
For the first time during this election cycle, Claude will provide U.S. voting information from the nonprofit Democracy Works, along with election results.
Anthropic said its goal is to make Claude useful for political discussions and help prevent people from misusing it in ways that could harm elections.
Irene Wright covers elections in Georgia as the Atlanta Connect reporter with USA Today's Deep South Connect team. Find her on X @IreneEWright or email her at [email protected].