Florida Woman Charged After Claude Reports Threat — SkimNews
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- Carli Michelle Heller of Bonita Springs, Florida was charged with making a written threat of violence after allegedly writing on September 26 that she planned to "shoot up" the Sheriff's office, later telling investigators she uses Claude as a "diary."
- Anthropic's safety systems escalated the entry to a human reviewer, who deemed it a credible threat and reported it to law enforcement; deputies then identified Heller and detained her without incident.
- Anthropic says it may share user information in limited emergencies if it believes disclosure is necessary to prevent death or serious physical injury.
- Heller faces a second-degree felony under Florida Statute 836.10, which criminalizes written or electronic threats to kill, injure, carry out a mass shooting, or commit an act of terrorism.
- The case follows lawsuits against OpenAI and Sam Altman — from British Columbia over an alleged mass shooting the company could have flagged, and from Florida over ChatGPT's role in the 2025 Florida State University shooting — contrasting Anthropic's proactive reporting with OpenAI's decision not to alert police when conversations fell below the legal referral threshold.
Why it matters: This is the first publicly detailed case of Anthropic proactively flagging a user's threats to police, and it ends with a second-degree felony — up to 15 years under Florida law — for a woman who said she thought she was writing in a private diary. It puts every AI user on notice that chatbot "journaling" is reviewed by humans and can trigger criminal charges, while also sharpening the contrast with OpenAI, which has been sued for not reporting similar conversations.
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