OpenCL creator in dispute with Anthropic, account temporarily suspended

Staff Report: PNN

Peter Steinberger, the creator of the AI-based tool OpenCL, has recently become involved in a dispute with Anthropic. His account was temporarily suspended due to alleged “suspicious activity,” but it was restored within a few hours.

In a social media post on Friday morning, Steinberger stated that it may become more difficult in the future for OpenCL to work with Anthropic’s models. He also shared a screenshot showing the suspension message of his account.

However, the situation quickly changed. Shortly after the post went viral, his account was reactivated. At that time, an engineer from Anthropic publicly commented that there is no policy of banning anyone for using OpenCL and even offered assistance if needed.

Recently, Anthropic announced that its Claude subscription will no longer cover the cost of third-party tools such as OpenCL. From now on, these services will require separate API-based charges. According to the company, tools like OpenCL consume significantly more computing power, which cannot be included under the standard subscription model.

Criticizing this decision, Steinberger alleged that after integrating popular features into their own platform, there is an attempt to restrict open-source tools. However, Anthropic has not made any direct comment on this allegation.

It is noteworthy that Steinberger is currently employed at OpenAI, but remains actively involved in the development of the OpenCL project. According to him, he uses Claude to maintain compatibility of OpenCL with various models.

This incident has sparked discussion in the tech community—especially regarding the relationship between open-source tools and large technology companies, competition, and policy positions.