Man arrested after telling AI chatbot about ‘plans for mass shooting’

Man arrested after telling AI chatbot about ‘plans for mass shooting’ A 29-year-old man has been remanded in custody after Interpol flagged his conversation with Claude - Bookmark Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Already a member? Log in A man in Sydney was arrested after he threatened to carry out a mass shooting at a childcare centre during an interaction with popular AI chatbot Claude. David Lan Thackray, 29, has been held in custody for a mental health assessment after Sutherland Local Court was informed on Monday that he told the chatbot about his intentions to shoot children at a childcare centre near his home in Hurstville. He allegedly said he would “go down to the local Westfield right now and shoot up the local daycare”. His Claude account was subsequent suspended. Mr Thackray was arrested on Sunday, 18 October after the conversation was flagged to Interpol. He was charged with using a carriage service to menance, harass or offend, reported the Sydney Morning Herald. Arguing for him to be kept in custody on Monday, prosecutors said: “What he intends to do is start murdering people in Sydney just like the [alleged] terrorist did in Bondi.” That was a reference to the terrorist attack at Sydney’s Bondi Beach in which at least 15 people were killed as two gunmen, allegedly a father-son duo, opened fire on a crowd celebrating the start of Hanukkah. One gunman, 50-year-old Sajid Akram, was shot by police and died at the scene. His 24-year-old son, Naveed Akram, was arrested and faces trial for his alleged involvement in the attack. Mr Thackray’s lawyer, Danilo Rajkovic, rejected the prosecution’s argument, saying there was “no weight behind what he was saying”. Mr Thackray, he said, went on a tirade induced by stress and frustration after he attempted to seek the chatbot’s help to help treat an ear infection. Mr Rajkovic claimed that his client, who has lived in Australia for close to two decades, did not instruct the chatbot to issue threats to anyone and was having the interaction in the privacy of his own home. Mr Thackray is a student of international relations with no criminal history, the court was told. The matter will return to court once the mental health evaluation is successfully completed. This is not the first time that Claude has flagged misuse. Developed by AI giant Anthropic, the chatbot is trained to decline requests about planning or inciting violence and share user data with law enforcement agencies. In a report published in September, Anthropic shared details on how, between December 2025 and August 2026, its Threat Intelligence team “identified and disrupted operations in which threat actors tried to use Claude for malicious activity”. It identified seven areas of activity that had been flagged, including “cyber operations, influence operations, surveillance, scams and fraud, biological misuse, conventional weapons development, and distillation”.