Tech Press Covers Consolidated Anthropic Complaint
This week's Anthropic news was rightly focused on AI safety, but we're pleased that members of the tech press also covered the consolidated complaint we filed, which alleges that Anthropic deceptively advertised its Claude subscriptions. For example, Hayden Field of The Verge called the lawsuit "a rare attempt to legally penalize AI companies for a widely held point of frustration: the industry’s growing money squeeze."
Monica distilled our Anthropic lawsuit beautifully, as reported in The Verge:
“This is hard for consumers — they don’t know what’s in that black box,” she said. “They have to rely on the claims the marketer is giving. There’s no way for them to audit it. There’s no way for them to know exactly what it is they’re going to get… They’re basically taking a leap, and they’re believing in an honest marketplace.”
She added that another reason the case was “compelling” for her is that she and Daffan started hearing from people who felt they needed to pay high-priced subscription costs for AI services in order to avoid becoming irrelevant in the job market. But oftentimes, she said, they felt they weren’t getting what they paid for, which was frustrating for a service that costs between $100 and $200 per month.
“[Daffan] and I worked at the Federal Trade Commission for 38 years combined,” Vaca said, adding, “There is a long line of precedent on false advertising. It’s commercial speech. You can’t lie when you’re marketing a product.”
Even if Anthropic has the stipulations somewhere on its website, Vaca said, it shouldn’t be up to the consumer to have to seek that out.
“It’s a ‘buyer beware’ approach,” she said. “And that’s really not fair to people.”
For more information, you can also read coverage of our consolidated complaint in Engadget, The New Stack, and Tech Buzz. Big thanks to our co-counsel at Conn Law, PC and Clarkson Law Firm.
This content is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice.
