Anthropic must face lawsuit over Claude subscription marketing

WASHINGTON, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic must face claims that it misled customers by advertising its premium Claude Max subscriptions as providing "5x or 20x more usage" than lower-priced plans, a federal judge in California has ruled.

US Magistrate Judge Alex Tse in San Francisco on Friday said, opens new tab the plaintiffs plausibly alleged that consumers could interpret Anthropic's marketing to mean Max subscribers would receive five or 20 times more usage than lesser-tier subscribers over the course of a month.

Tse allowed claims for deceptive advertising under California's consumer state law, negligent misrepresentation and breach of contract to proceed, but dismissed other claims, including one filed under the ⁠state's unfair competition law.

The judge allowed the plaintiffs to file an amended lawsuit.

Anthropic and its attorneys at Weil, Gotshal & Manges did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Attorneys for the plaintiffs had no immediate comment.

Theproposed class action, opens new tab was filed in September by two Claude Max subscribers, including Solomon Smith, a computer-science student who said he used the AI chatbot for coding projects and other work.

The plaintiffs allege Anthropic's marketing overstated the benefits of its $100- and $200-per-month Max plans. Claude Max subscribers receive five or 20 times more usage per five-hour session than Pro users, but remain subject to weekly caps that ⁠are not five or 20 times higher, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit seeks class action status on behalf of thousands of Claude subscribers.

Anthropic countered that reasonable consumers would understand its references to "5x or 20x more usage" to mean usage per session, and pointed to disclosures on its website. Tse said those disclosures were too ⁠removed from the company's primary sales pages to justify dismissing the case at this stage.

The case is Karl Kahn and Solomon Smith v. Anthropic PBC, US District Court, Northern District of California, No. 3:26-cv-05763-AGT.

For Kahn: Elliot Conn and ⁠Colin Hector of Conn Law and Monica Vaca of Vaca Daffan; for Smith: Glenn Danas and Zarrina Ozari of Clarkson Law Firm

For Anthropic: David Singh and Morgan MacBride of Weil, Gotshal & Manges