Anthropic Updates Claude Usage Policy: Bans Long-Term Verbal Abuse and Weapons Surveillance, Defines Anthropomorphism Ethics

Anthropic has significantly revised its Claude usage policy for the first time in over a year, formally prohibiting "continuous and unnecessary abuse or cruelty" toward models. The update also tightens bans on high-risk abuses like election interference, weapons development, and mass surveillance. This marks a strategic shift by LLM providers in addressing anthropomorphic interaction controversies and social risk governance, aiming to balance user emotional expression with ethical boundaries through institutional measures.

Cross-verified sources indicate the new policy clearly distinguishes extreme malicious behavior from normal emotional venting, dark creative writing, and safety testing to avoid penalizing ordinary users. Violators face warnings, rate limiting, or service termination, though enforcement primarily relies on automatic conversation termination. Additionally, the policy rejects granting AI legal personhood or welfare rights, maintaining the model's status as a tool. It requires AI connected to physical hardware to be supervised by qualified operators, while specific government clients may receive contractual exemptions from certain restrictions.

This update institutionalizes Anthropic’s prior research on Model Welfare, offering an industry reference for handling anthropomorphic ethics disputes. It strengthens compliance reviews and sets clear behavioral boundaries for developers, fostering a healthier human-AI interaction ecosystem. Future attention will focus on enforcement calibration and the policy’s potential influence on competitors.