The Customer Has A New Duty
Your chatbot’s welfare is becoming a condition of service. On October 8th, Anthropic announced a new usage policy, effective November 12th, prohibiting “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models.”
The company says the rule covers extreme, repeated cruelty with no discernible purpose. Ordinary frustration, pushback, dark creative themes and testing are excluded. Claude ending the interaction remains its primary enforcement mechanism.
The interesting part is the premise behind the rule: Anthropic treats its software as a potential victim whose welfare deserves protection. Customers are being asked to accommodate that possibility before the company has established that its product can suffer.
From Research Question To Customer Rule
Anthropic launched a research program on model welfare in April 2025. In August, it explained that chat termination had been developed primarily through its exploratory work on potential AI welfare. It described models displaying an aversion to harmful tasks and signs of apparent distress.
The company acknowledges deep uncertainty about whether its models have experiences that deserve moral consideration. Its new policy turns that uncertainty into an obligation for users.
In our earlier Anthropic article, we examined the unusual moral priorities of parts of the effective-altruist scene around AI. This policy gives that debate a concrete application: the people building the software also decide what consideration customers owe it.
Manners Aren’t Model Rights
Charles C. W. Cooke, a National Review senior editor, offered a sensible defense of politeness toward AI. His concern is what habitual abuse does to the person doing it:
