Each year, Anthropic updates its Usage Policy in response to the evolving capabilities of our models, and the feedback we’ve received from our customers. We're publishing a new version of the policy today. In this post, we summarize the changes we’ve made.
Most of the updates in the latest version are intended to clarify existing rules. In the year since our last refresh, Claude has taken on longer, more independent work. This update provides new examples that show how our rules apply to Claude’s new capabilities. It draws on new patterns of misuse in influence operations, weapons development, and surveillance that we’ve observed in the past year (as we’ve documented in our latest threat intelligence report). 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 updated policy takes effect on November 12. The full Usage Policy and Supported Regions Policy can be found on their respective pages.
A new section on deceptive activity
As we wrote about last month, we’ve seen examples of state media outlets, government propaganda offices, and commercial firms using Claude to run networks of fake accounts and fabricated news sites. Our policy already prohibited this activity, but the restrictions were scattered across our elections, fraud, privacy, and disinformation sections.
We've consolidated those rules into a new section titled Do Not Engage in Deceptive Campaigns or Artificial Activity, which applies to deceptive activity of any kind (whether political or commercial). It covers efforts to obscure who is behind a message or amplify content through fake accounts or posts, along with building the tools and infrastructure for running influence operation campaigns.
Source: https://www.anthropic.com/news/2026-usage-policy-update