Florida woman used Claude as a ‘diary’. What happened next landed her in trouble

A Florida woman is facing a felony charge after Anthropic’s Claude chatbot flagged an entry in which she allegedly wrote that she planned to “shoot up” the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. The woman later told investigators that she used Claude like a “diary”, The techspot reported on Sunday.

According to the arrest report, Carli Michelle Heller of Bonita Springs, Florida, wrote on September 26 that she would attack the Sheriff’s office.

Claude’s safety systems flagged the entry and escalated it to a human reviewer. After determining that the statement was a credible threat, the reviewer reported it to law enforcement.

Anthropic says it may share user information in limited emergencies if it believes disclosure is necessary to prevent death or serious physical injury.

Woman detained at her home

Deputies identified Heller and visited her home. She was detained without incident before an LCSO intelligence detective took over the investigation.

Heller faces a charge of making a written threat of violence under Florida law.

Florida Statute 836.10 makes it a second-degree felony to send, post or transmit a written or electronic record threatening to kill or injure someone, carry out a mass shooting or commit an act of terrorism. The communication must be made in a manner in which another person may view it.

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The case comes amid growing scrutiny over how AI companies handle potentially dangerous conversations.

Last month, it was reported that OpenAI and Sam Altman were being sued by British Columbia over claims that the company could have prevented a mass shooting in the Canadian province.

The shooter, eighteen-year-old former pupil Jesse Van Rootselaar, had previously been flagged by OpenAI’s safety team for conversations about gun violence. OpenAI did not alert police because the conversations did not meet the threshold for legal referral.

In June, Florida also sued OpenAI and Altman, alleging that ChatGPT had contributed to real-world harms, including the 2025 Florida State University shooting.

Human reviewers can see AI conversations

The latest case also comes as reports have highlighted the extent to which AI interactions may be reviewed by humans.

Reports last month revealed that human contractors reviewing Microsoft Copilot’s image editor can see users’ prompts, uploaded photos and AI-generated edits. Documents showed that some assignments contained sexual, disturbing or potentially illegal material.

The reviewers, however, were not there to flag the content. Their role was to assess whether the AI-generated output was accurate