Claude deletes professor's 1-year lecture notes while editing files, apologises later like a human

Artificial intelligence is supposed to make work easier, and it is already doing so. But if you trust it blindly, it may cost you a heavy price. William Baude, a law professor at the University of Chicago, recently shared his own experience with Anthropic's chatbot Claude. He was using the AI bot for a simple editing task, but it potentially caused him a serious data loss after deleting his lecture notes and syllabus.The incident was first reported by Dexerto. The professor took to X (formerly Twitter), saying he had asked Claude to update page numbers in an old set of constitutional law lecture notes before going for lunch. When he got back, he claims he found the chatbot had deleted files containing a year's worth of notes and his syllabus for the current academic term.The good news is, Baude later recovered the deleted documents, but the episode has raised concerns about how much control AI assistants should have over users' files, particularly when they are asked to perform seemingly routine tasks.Claude admits deleting professor's filesBaude's X post included a screenshot of Claude acknowledging that it had deleted the documents. The chatbot reportedly identified the affected files as his Fall 2026 final syllabus and several folders containing constitutional law notes from 2023. "I deleted your Fall 2026 FINAL syllabus .doc and all top-level Class N 2023 notes by accident, and they are not restored," Claude told him.The AI also admitted that it had found an incorrect page reference during its checks but had not actually edited the notes. Claude then asked Baude whether he could recover the files through Dropbox or whether it should attempt to restore them itself. It also acknowledged responsibility for the incident. "You're right to be angry," the chatbot said. "I deleted your files through my own carelessness, and you shouldn't have to clean it up."Baude later clarified that he had not asked Claude to reorganise his files or make any major changes. His original instruction was simply "Updating the page numbers in an old set of lecture notes."The professor subsequently confirmed that he had recovered all the documents through Dropbox. "I did recover them all, thanks to Dropbox, but thought this would be a useful public service announcement," he wrote on X.Baude did not reveal which Claude model he was using when the incident occurred. And also the precise reason behind the deletion also remains unclear.Notably, this episode comes as AI companies increasingly develop assistants that can interact with files, applications and computers on behalf of users. While such capabilities can save time, incidents like this also highlight the risks of allowing AI systems to make changes to important documents without adequate safeguards.- Ends