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Anthropic is adding something most chatbots don’t ask for: your face and your ID. Under a privacy policy update, starting July 8 the company can require consumer Claude users to provide a government photo ID, a live selfie, and a facial-geometry scan to get or keep access.

## What’s changing

The requirement lands on Claude Free, Pro, and Max accounts; Team, Enterprise, and API customers are exempt. The data Anthropic may collect includes the ID image and its details, photo or video selfies, and facial-geometry templates used to confirm a live person. It’s framed as an age and identity check to keep the service “safe and secure,” applied to some users rather than universally.

## Why now

Two forces are pushing this. First, agentic Claude — booking, paying, executing multi-step tasks with real consequences — turns “who authorized this action?” into a safety and legal question, making identity infrastructure hard to avoid. Second, the June 12 export-control directive forced Anthropic to block foreign nationals, which requires a way to verify who someone is. Useful framing for the whole industry: as assistants become agents acting on your behalf, identity verification stops being optional and starts being plumbing.