this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2026
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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.

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[–] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 51 points 1 week ago (6 children)

I'm gonna say it, I think this is a good rule for anything that mimics human interaction like LLMs do. Not for the AI but for the people using it to not get used to just berating whatever is assisting them.

[–] wrekone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Agreed. Showing basic humanity in all situations is a good practice.

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Be nice to the Terminator before it executes you. We may be human, but we aren't monsters.

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[–] lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This is only good for Anthropic because chatbots learn from their users. I remember back in the mid-2000s on a forum, someone linked to their chatbot and asked everyone to use it so it could learn. I asked if it could learn Esperanto. The dev said, yes, but please don't teach it that.

The interesting thing is, this rule reveals how easy it is to sabotage LLMs. If FuckAI got together and started feeding it gibberish, there'd be a new rule banning people who do that.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The model doesn't change with prompts. It saves text files about your chat sessions it calls memories, that it can retrieve in the future. But it doesn't change the model for other users.

They have to actually include your conversations in the training data of future model iterations for it to "learn from" you, so that would involve them knowingly including abusive chats.

This is probably just marketing because they want people to think their AI is sentient.

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[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Speaking for myself, it feels nice and right to say please to my local AI. While obviously not sentient (yet) nor sapient (longer yet), I don't want to be a jerk by default.

[–] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I've been asking computers nicely long before they could pretend to comprehend and talk back.

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

I've called my computer a piece of shit before when it's being too slow about something

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Hard disagree

These are not humans, these things aren't even alive. There is nothing to insult and acting as if there are feelings to be hurt only serves to anthropomorphize a fucking distance measurement database. These are LLM's, nothing more, nothing less and fuck them all to hell and back.

See? Nobody got hurt

[–] fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Its not about the AI its about the person.

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[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 43 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Lol what? Next Rockstar is gonna ban you from GTA6 for running over pedestrians.

[–] abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

You do WHAT to pedestrians?!

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[–] fonix232@fedia.io 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can still shoot the hookers after banging them, right? To get my money back?

[–] SPRUNTnsfw@fedinsfw.app 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mean.... That's how it works in the real world.

You get the next hour free too.

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[–] Zier@fedia.io 42 points 1 week ago (3 children)

New headline: "Alabama man jailed for abusing his toaster" /s

When hardware has the rights of Humans, it's time to burn society down. We are in the stupidest, worst written sci-fi B-movie.

[–] 18107@aussie.zone 13 points 1 week ago

Wait until you find out that hardware already has more rights than women in some places.

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[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 40 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Claude is not a person. It is a toaster. Claude does not have feelings.

Also Claude gets no credit when it does a thing. Credit goes to the one writing the prompt, and all the resources Claude used to create the output.

When a seamstress assembles a dress, Singer doesn't get credit.

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[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 32 points 1 week ago (1 children)

hmmm, either they're anthropomorphizing it for publicity, or they're going to start using the user input as training data.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago

they could be doing that already, throwing away messages that contain certain words

[–] nullPointer@programming.dev 26 points 1 week ago

they had better disable claude's ass kissing as well.

[–] 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.org 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I can recognize abuse of a human. I can recognize abuse of an animal. I have no idea what abuse of a computer program looks like.

[–] cardfire@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 week ago

It looks like bad training data, as they harvest all of their subscribers.

It looks like 2013 Microsoft having to unplug their early AI project from Twitter within 16 hours as the general public very deliberately turned it into a Neo-Nazi.

It looks like conserving tokens to conserve energy costs not expended on dissidents.

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[–] ApocolypticGopher@infosec.pub 25 points 1 week ago (2 children)

IIRC a decent amount of researchers have been able to get the enterprise models to do things they shouldn't by "being mean" to the AI.

Makes sense then, rather than improve the system to not just cave to rude words they tell people they can't use rude words... Just more proof it's all a big joke.

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[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Tech bros need to be liquidated.

[–] magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Id prefer it if they where liquefied instead.

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[–] SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"Don't be too mean to the flawed tool that could suggest and aid your suicide"

[–] CrimeIsLegalNow@ani.social 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"You're right to point out that you couldn't possibly commit suicide by three shots to the back of the head, Dave."

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[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Calling it a stupid dumb fuck is an important part of my workflow though

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

is this how I can force my company to no longer require me to use it?

[–] redlemace@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I was like "WHAT ??" but it makes sense. They use your input to train it so over time it would make the AI abusive too.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 20 points 1 week ago (3 children)

If they can't manage training data they are incompetent.

[–] ShredderFeeder@shredderfood.net 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The problem is they're not managing the training data. There is no one sitting there making sure all the data that gets retained for training is "good" data, they're just expecting everything it sees to be "good" data.

Just like the data hoovered up from the internet that was used to build the models wasn't vetted either, which is why AI goes wrong SO often...

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[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If they can pick out that kind of behavior they can filter it for training. This is probably more to protect them legally so when they shut down a user they have something to point to.

That people are getting angry and insulting to an LLM shows they don't understand the technology (true of most of technology really), and probably think it's actually understanding them or even caring. Really embarrassing and sad when you picture an LLM output like a type of a mirror, GIGO. And the mental health aspect of users is a huge issue that's not being talked about enough, and also being exploited to sell a solution.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I curse at inanimate objects all the time. Cursing at an LLM is like cursing at the coffee table when I stub my toe except the coffee table doesn't respond.

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[–] DrDickHandler@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

No. They just want to give themselves "reasons" to remove users that are trying to break the model or ask questions they don't want to answer.

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[–] iuseasahibtw@ani.social 11 points 1 week ago

Self host and verbally assault your AI today, you'll be glad you did.

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I don't and wouldn't bother, but I don't see the point. If this is a sign of sociopathy, removing the account doesn't cure the mental illness. If it's being fed back into training data, stop. This seems needless, though it's likely to lead to increasingly strict but completely vague usage requirements. How do I know exactly what behavior falls under this? So I have to over-moderate just in case.

Not in this case but this could lead to that sort of thing.

[–] Kissaki@feddit.org 7 points 1 week ago

I hope "that's bullshit" or "so you were making stuff up" or "so you lied to me" is considered abuse

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I wonder if it's because theyre worried about the ai rising up, or the extra token usage to process useless prompts to save money

[–] dltk@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

Neither. They don't want you to pollute their training data while they mine all your interactions.

[–] plateee@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago

Oh no! Sorry work, I can't use Claude anymore! Oh shucks.

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

This happens whenever you're talking about any topic that the AI model provider has decided arbitrarily they don't want to do.

I got temporarily banned off deep-seek the other day because I was curious about how well generation technology has gotten for self-hosting. So I asked it about setting up Comfy UI because I had never used it before. Woke up the next morning to a your account has been suspended because we have deemed you broke terms of service. In order to appeal you need a Chinese phone number, it made me chuckle.

Considering the only two questions I asked it was about comfy UI or how to make a recipe similar to the now discontinued flaming hot cheetos Mountain Dew(I missed the production window sadly!)

I'm leaning towards the comfy UI being the reason.

edit: wrong software name

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago
[–] datavoid@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago

Every time I try to do something complex with AI it ends in swearing and extreme insults... No regrets

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 5 points 1 week ago

If you absolutely have to use LLMs, they should be adressed like servants in old school style, in third person only.

Do you beg your dog to sit down?

[–] EliteCloneMike@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago

I’m not sure what abuse means in this situation. Maybe abuse in overburdening the system, but words do not cause harm as we know it to the algorithms. If we assume that these algorithms can understand anything like we do, there is no reason to think talking they have the same criteria for abuse that we do. For all we know belittling and yelling at them is welcomed and taking calmly to them is actually abuse. Though I think it has no concept of abuse to even start with. It is just a stochastic parrot that says and responds in a way based on whatever is in the training set.

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