Users of Claude, the AI chatbot made by Anthropic, will have their service restricted amid a surge in demand for the ChatGPT rival.
The new rate limits follow a series of outages for Claude this month, with a record number of people joining the service following a high-profile dispute between Anthropic and the US Department of War.
The feud stemmed from Anthropic’s refusal to allow the Pentagon to use its artificial intelligence technology for domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons.
The AI startup was subsequently blacklisted from all federal agencies, with the Department of War officially informing Anthropic that it would deem it a “supply chain risk to national security” – a label previously reserved for foreign adversaries.
Anthropic’s stance received widespread public backing, fueled further by efforts from ChatGPT creator OpenAI to make a deal with the US military.
Claude subsequently overtook ChatGPT to top the app charts earlier this month, with the company’s chief product officer revealing that more than a million people per day were signing up for the AI bot.
The latest session limits are designed to prevent Claude from crashing or slowing to a crawl during busy hours by reducing the power of the service for heavy users.
“To manage growing demand for Claude we’re adjusting our five hour session limits for free/Pro/Max subs during peak hours,” Thariq Shihipar, a member of Anthropic’s technical team, wrote in a post to X.
“I know this was frustrating. We’re continuing to invest in scaling efficiently. I’ll keep you posted on progress.”
Mr Shihipar claimed that the restrictions would only impact around 7 per cent of users based on current usage.
It is not the first time that Anthropic has introduced rate limits, with the company setting up similar limitations for paying customers last August.
“Some of the biggest Claude Code fans are running it continuously in the background 24/7,” Anthropic said.
“These uses are remarkable and we want to enable them. But a few outlying cases are very costly to support. For example, one user consumed tens of thousands in model usage on a $200 plan.”
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