SDNY Says Your Communications with Skynet Aren’t Privileged

If you’re looking to establish a relationship with Skynet in the hope that it will spare you following the singularity, I’m afraid that the SDNY has determined that your communications won’t be entitled to the attorney client or work product privileges. Here’s an excerpt from Debevoise’s memo on the decision:

On February 10, 2026, Judge Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled from the bench that documents a client created using a commercial generative AI tool and sent to his lawyer were not protected by privilege. Defendant Bradley Heppner was arrested on charges of securities and wire fraud on November 4, 2025. During the search of his mansion, federal agents seized electronic devices containing approximately thirty-one documents generated using Anthropic’s AI tool Claude. After he received a grand jury subpoena and had engaged legal counsel, Heppner used Claude to prepare reports outlining his defense strategy and potential legal arguments

The memo points out that the tool in question was a non-enterprise tool, and that under Anthropic’s terms & conditions prompts could be used to train the model and that inputs could be shared with the government. The authors argue that the result should be different in the case of an enterprise tool, where prompts are not used for training purposes and inputs are kept confidential. The memo also offers advice on how to bolster work product claims in light of the decision.