For years, the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) followed a straightforward pattern: people gave instructions, and machines responded, but as large language models (LLMs) have become more lifelike, empathetic and responsive, a new behaviour has emerged: sustained verbal abuse and cruelty directed at AI systems.
In late 2026, Anthropic became the first major AI company to explicitly prohibit “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” towards its chatbot, Claude, marking a potential shift in how the industry approaches human interactions with AI.
While companies such as OpenAI, Google and Meta have policies restricting the use of AI to harm or harass people or generate hate speech, Anthropic’s approach extends the discussion to how users treat the AI models themselves and the dynamics of human-machine conversations.
This is not cruelty in the conventional sense, however, because AI systems do not experience emotions or psychological distress in the way humans do.
To understand why technology companies are beginning to set boundaries around how people interact with AI, two questions need to be examined:
What does abusive behaviour towards a large language model actually look like?
What effects can such behaviour have on the user, the AI model’s responses and the technology behind it?
To know more, click here.