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Anthropic has started rolling out identity verification on Claude \u201cfor a few use cases.\u201d The company didn\u2019t list out those use cases in its announcement, but we\u2019ve asked it for details and will update this post when we hear back. Anthropic says you might see a verification prompt upon \u201caccessing certain capabilities,\u201d asking you to verify your identity. You would have to show a valid and physical government-issued photo ID. You\u2019d also have take a selfie with your phone or computer camera that the system will compare against the ID you present.<\/p>\n
The news, as you\u2019d expect, wasn\u2019t well-received. Many users are questioning the necessity of identity verification to be able to use an AI chatbot, especially if Anthropic already has their credit cards on file as paying subscribers. People are also criticizing Anthropic\u2019s decision to use Persona Identities, which also provides age verification services for OpenAI and Roblox. One of Persona\u2019s major investors is venture firm Founders Fund, which was co-founded by Peter Thiel, who\u2019s also the co-founder and chairman of surveillance company Palantir.<\/p>\n
Palantir\u2019s customers are mostly federal agencies and government offices, including the FBI, the CIA and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Most criticisms against the company center around the services it provides those customers, as they\u2019re mainly used to expand government surveillance using its facial recognition and AI technologies.<\/p>\n
In its announcement, Anthropic said that Persona will be the one handling your IDs and selfies. It will not copy and store those images. It also said that Persona is \u201ccontractually limited\u201d in how it can use your data and that all data passing through its process is \u201cencrypted in transit and at rest.\u201d Anthropic emphasized that it will not use your identity data to train its models and that it will not share your data with anyone else.<\/p>\n