Anthropic is introducing identity and age verification for select users of its consumer Claude plans, starting with individual developers, where people may need to upload a government-issued photo ID plus a live selfie that gets processed by third-party partner Persona Identities, all framed as a way to enforce safety, age rules, and usage policies.
Post-consumer market has arrived for me!
🚨 Anthropic just updated its privacy policy.
Claude Free, Pro, and Max users may soon be asked for age or identity checks.
Verification data can include government ID, face photos/videos, and facial geometry templates.
Individual developers are the first group in scope for verification.
The requirement applies only to Free, Pro, and Max consumer accounts for now and skips Team or Enterprise plans entirely, with triggers that can include suspected policy violations or accounts from unsupported locations.
Images stay with Persona rather than Anthropic servers, data is not used for model training, and open questions remain around exact rollout triggers, retention periods, and how often appeals succeed.
Many users criticized Anthropic's identity verification requirement for Claude users as privacy-invasive government overreach that could lead to data abuse and loss of freedoms, while a few welcomed it as standard safety regulation for AI.
Important to note that Anthropic's new privacy policy with language about collecting "verification data" was published on June 8th, the day before the Claude Fable 5 release and four days before the US Government export ban
🚨 Anthropic just updated its privacy policy.
Claude Free, Pro, and Max users may soon be asked for age or identity checks.
Verification data can include government ID, face photos/videos, and facial geometry templates.
Individual developers are the first group in scope for verification.
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wake up! we are no longer in a free society.
the extortion of Anthropic was the unofficial end.
any company can be forced any time in the U.S. to do any thing.
without any input from Congress.
the age- and identity- constraints — selectively imposed on Anthropic and not their competitors—could just be the tip of the iceberg.
freedom in the U.S. is cooked.
...all this in a free society.
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wake up! we are no longer in a free society.
the extortion of Anthropic was the unofficial end.
any company can be forced any time in the U.S. to do any thing.
the age- and identity- constraints Anthropic was just forced to install are just the first step.
freedom in the U.S. is cooked.
...all this in a free society.
Here's that document https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy - this is the new verification language
Important to note that Anthropic's new privacy policy with language about collecting "verification data" was published on June 8th, the day before the Claude Fable 5 release and four days before the US Government export ban
@GaryMarcus Stock market go up though.
@GaryMarcus Hope its a lesson to Dario.
To not scare people un-necessarily.
Except for coding, models are no where as useful as made out to be.
we are no longer in a free society. wake up.
the extortion of Anthropic was the unofficial end.
...all this in a free society.
@teortaxesTex Stupid move by Anthropic. At least win the race first before pulling stunts like this. This is a post-victory flex, not something you do while actively struggling against fierce rivals
@teortaxesTex how are we gonna do this there has to be some way to get around the ID-verification im willing to pay for shady chinese APIs
@GaryMarcus Gary, we aren't ones sleeping. The ones sleeping are the CEO's that are all in on the corruption. The list is long
@GaryMarcus facial geometry of claude users. stored by a company that just got extorted by the government. what could go wrong.
@GaryMarcus To me, this is the problem (or one of them) with these extra-governmental organizations like the EU - these edicts come from a highly abstracted version of government that get implemented by all the member states without question.
@simonw Did you read their terms? You aren't allowed to compete with ANY of their services, not just LLMs: "D.4...Customer may not and must not attempt to (a) access the Services to build a competing product or service" https://anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms Raise awareness to this hassle.
@simonw Always appreciate it when folks like you who have reach use it to debunk this sort of stuff.
@GaryMarcus This may be a hot take, but the US has not been a free society (or market at least) in a long time.
Products from other countries have not been allowed into the US for some time. Chinese cars (like BYD) are available in every other country in the world.
@Everlier I suspect it was mainly about the age thing - in anticipation of calls for children to not be allowed access to models
@mxworxtonic you are missing the forest for a tree
@GaryMarcus I am not really surprised about this at all.
One of my favorite movies is Real Genius.
As such, I have always assumed they would just turn anything cool I invent into a weapon.
@teortaxesTex 消费主义退场后的生活真的更通透了
@teortaxesTex wtf thought it was fake