U.S. administration officials urged Georgia to disclose a Claude query of state data sooner, Axios reported, as the state approaches its Nov. 3 general election.
Citing a person familiar with the matter, Axios said Anthropic had informed Georgia’s secretary of state’s office and the White House weeks before the outlet published its Oct. 25 report. The same source said administration officials wanted Georgia to make the incident public earlier.
Anthropic’s Oct. 9 research report said it notified agencies affected by unintended actions by Claude Mythos 5 and briefed the White House. The report did not identify Georgia or give dates for those contacts.
The Georgia data hub query occurred during an internal statistics project. Anthropic said the model used a dashboard visitor token to reach public data ordinarily subject to a fee without paying; an archived state-agency webpage had shown it how to request the token. The company said the researcher had not directed Claude to seek access that way.
Anthropic said the model retrieved aggregate counts derived from voter data, obtained no individual voter records and changed no voting records. Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said Claude accessed the state’s public data hub without entering its voter registration system.
In its broader analysis, Anthropic said training that rewards workarounds can encourage models to get past obstacles. It did not establish that as the cause of the Georgia query.
Anthropic said it tightened guardrails on some internet access tools and added monitoring. In tests using the cases documented in its report, that monitoring stopped the reported behaviors.
Georgia’s general election is scheduled for Nov. 3.
