What just happened? Another incident has taken place that illustrates the need to be careful what you tell AI. A Florida woman is facing felony charges after she used Claude as a diary and allegedly wrote that she planned to “shoot up” the Sheriff’s office. After a human reviewer examined the statements, they were reported to police.

According to the arrest report, Carli Michelle Heller, of Bonita Springs, Florida, wrote on September 26 that she would attack the Sheriff’s office. She later said that she uses Anthropic’s chatbot like a “diary.”

Claude’s safety systems flagged the entry and it was escalated to a human reviewer. After deciding it was a credible threat, the reviewer reported it to law enforcement.

The company says it may share user information in limited emergencies if it believes disclosure is necessary to prevent death or serious physical injury.

Deputies identified Heller and visited her home. She was detained without incident before an LCSO intelligence detective took over the investigation.

Heller faces a charge of making a written threat of violence under Florida law. Florida Statute 836.10 makes it a second-degree felony to send, post, or transmit a written or electronic record threatening to kill or injure someone, carry out a mass shooting, or commit an act of terrorism. The communication must be made in a manner in which another person may view it.

Anthropic isn’t going to be taking any chances when it comes to anything it deems a potential threat. Last month, it was reported that OpenAI and Sam Altman are being sued by British Columbia over claims that the company could have prevented a mass shooting in the Canadian province.

The shooter, eighteen-year-old former pupil Jesse Van ⁠Rootselaar, had previously been flagged by OpenAI’s safety team for her conversations about gun violence, but OpenAI never alerted police because the conversations did not meet the threshold for legal referral.

In June, Florida also sued OpenAI and Altman, alleging that ChatGPT had contributed to real-world harms, including the 2025 Florida State University shooting.

The latest incident is another reminder to think before you enter something into a chatbot that could get you into trouble. It’s certainly not a private diary whose contents are for your eyes only.

Reports last month revealed that human contractors reviewing Microsoft Copilot’s image editor can see users’ prompts, uploaded photos and AI-generated edits. Documents show that some of those assignments contain sexual, disturbing or potentially illegal material, though the reviewers are not there to flag the content – only to assess whether the output is accurate.

  • [object Object]@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    I get called a downer for mentioning how this all works. You shouldn’t connect your smart tv to the network, you shouldn’t use Alexa, anything you do online is public, and it always gets recorded poorly.

    Maybe my partner is the only person who listens, and she has all her stuff disabled, there are no network attached smart things in it house, but she still uses windows and she’s not yet receptive to moving to Linux (which is a hard sell).

    • 4am@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Smart TVs just find those “open” hotspots that cable providers leave on everyone’s modem now; you don’t even need to agree to TOS before it starts locating and spying.

      Every device is a wiretap. Every device is a wiretap. We live in a panopticon. The purpose of AI is to price us out of the component market. You can’t escape if you can’t afford your own hardware.

      • [object Object]@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        I haven’t seen any proof of this, so I’m still skeptical.

        I didn’t approve any TOS setting up my tv, so this would be legally a nightmare for them.

        • brachypelmide@lemmy.zip
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          1 day ago

          Gamers Nexus recently released a 2-hour video on LG smart TVs and how they spy on you. I haven’t watched the entire video yet, but it seems that the damn things start recording data as soon as they receive power.

          so this would be legally a nightmare for them

          To many corporations such as LG, laws are just the cost of doing business. Assuming they even receive a fine it will be so small that it won’t matter.

          • [object Object]@lemmy.ca
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            1 day ago

            I just mean there’s enough tech illiterate people out there that they don’t need that liability.

            95% of people will just turn on the tracking and not know or think about it. Connecting to nearby wifi is more of a risk.

            • brachypelmide@lemmy.zip
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              1 day ago

              Oh, true. I don’t think I’ve seen even a single person in real life deny cookies on a website. That does make it weird that they start tracking even before interacting with the TOS.

        • Ghoelian@piefed.social
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          1 day ago

          I suppose it should be pretty easily verifiable. Just set up a new SSID without protection and see what connects.

          Might as well try it with my own TV. IIRC I never accepted any TOS either.

    • badgermurphy@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      At least your partner is the one you most need to have and benefit from listening. Your privacy can easily be compromised by close associates. Best of luck to you; you’re not doing anything wrong. Its not you that’s the downer, it’s the circumstances you’re describing.

    • Willy@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      a lot of thise things are great though. everyone draws the line differently. im well aware of the surveillance. to live significantly under the radar you’d need to cut out tso much more to make it meaningful. do you really just watch antenna tv and dvds? no ordering online? always use fake membership cards at the grocery? pay cash? i mean fuck. i get ya though. im just playing devils advocate for the people that may not know and are calling you a downer. EDIT: there are so many nice linux dustros now and windows is so bad, that should be one of the easiest sells imo.

      • [object Object]@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        No I bought an AppkeTV, which while it isn’t perfect is not doing what smart tvs do.

        I’m not living as a hermit or completely off grid. I just stick to stuff that tracks me as little as reasonably possible and am mindful of what information could leak.

        Like, I still have to go to hotels when travelling and they have zero data security with your ID photo and cards. I can’t fix that or avoid it. That’s life. But disabling the always on microphones in my home I can manage.

          • [object Object]@lemmy.ca
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            1 day ago

            Automatic content recognition and selling it like LG and Samsung, inserting ads like Roku, installing residential proxies like 80% of smart tv apps.

            If I’m running Netflix and they’re selling the analytics data, it doesn’t matter what platform I use. But everything around that can be avoided.

            I would like to use a Linux box but haven’t found a good HDMICEC plus low power plus good app support combination (happy to take suggestions though)