Anthropic will ask Claude users to verify their identities 'for a few use cases'

Source: Engadget

Overview

Anthropic has begun rolling out identity verification for Claude “for a few use cases.” The company did not specify those use cases in its announcement; we have reached out for details and will update when we hear back. Users may encounter a verification prompt when “accessing certain capabilities,” requiring them to present a valid, physical government‑issued photo ID and a selfie taken with a phone or computer camera. The system will compare the selfie to the ID.

User Reaction

The announcement was met with criticism. Many users question the need for identity verification to use an AI chatbot, especially when Anthropic already has credit‑card information on file for paying subscribers. Additional concerns focus on Anthropic’s partnership with Persona Identities, which also provides age‑verification services for OpenAI and Roblox. Persona’s major investor is venture firm Founders Fund, co‑founded by Peter Thiel, who is also co‑founder and chairman of surveillance company Palantir.

Palantir’s customers include several federal agencies and government offices such as the FBI, CIA, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Critics argue that the services Palantir provides—particularly facial‑recognition and AI technologies—are primarily used to expand government surveillance.

Persona Identity Provider

In its announcement, Anthropic stated that Persona will handle the collection of IDs and selfies. According to Anthropic:

• Persona will not copy or store the images.
• Persona is “contractually limited” in how it can use the data.
• All data passing through Persona’s process is encrypted in transit and at rest.
• Anthropic will not use identity data to train its models and will not share the data with anyone else.

Source

This article originally appeared on Engadget: