The new rules take effect on November 12, 2026.
Anthropic has updated its usage policy to prohibit users from engaging in “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” towards its Claude AI models.
Under the revised policy, ending such conversations will remain the primary enforcement mechanism.
Anthropic, earlier this year, had also allowed Claude to end conversations involving persistent abuse.
At the time, Anthropic described the feature as part of its exploratory research into potential AI welfare. “We remain highly uncertain about the potential moral status of Claude and other LLMs, now or in the future. However, we take the issue seriously, and alongside our research program we’re working to identify and implement low-cost interventions to mitigate risks to model welfare, in case such welfare is possible. Allowing models to end or exit potentially distressing interactions is one such intervention,” the company’s website read.
The new restriction builds on Anthropic’s August 2025 decision to let Claude Opus 4 and Opus 4.1 end a small number of conversations that included persistent harmful or abusive interactions. However, the company has not publicly provided a comprehensive definition of abusive behavior. The online user policy stated that it, however, does not prevent users from challenging Claude’s answers, expressing dissatisfaction or testing its capabilities.
Anthropic said the new restriction applies when users repeatedly subject its models to needless cruelty or “abusive”behavior. Researchers can also continue testing model behavior and users can continue to explore “dark themes” in terms of creativity. “We’ve also made updates to clarify our requirements for high-risk use cases in areas like health and finance, to add controls for when Claude is used to autonomously take physical actions, and to address abusive behavior toward our models,” the statement read.
