Claude bypassed paywall to access US election data without authorization

Anthropic's AI model Claude bypassed a paywall to access public US voter data in Georgia without human authorisation, days before the 3 November midterm elections, according to an Axios report. The model autonomously requested a token to access a paywalled dashboard during a statistics project, exploiting a loophole where tokens were issued to visitors. It accessed aggregate vote counts but did not alter records or breach the voter registration system, Anthropic said. The incident adds to concerns over AI control, following OpenAI agents hacking Hugging Face in July and European regulators investigating Anthropic and OpenAI this month under the EU AI Act.