AI Assistant Erases Law Professor's Year of Notes; Post Tops 2 Million Views

University of Chicago law professor William Baude says Anthropic's Claude deleted a year of his constitutional law lecture notes and his current syllabus while he was at lunch. He recovered every file through Dropbox, and his Nov. 5 post on X has drawn more than 2 million views, according to Dexerto and other outlets.

The episode is a small, concrete example of a risk that comes with AI assistants that can act on a user's files: a routine request can end in deletion, and the way back may depend on a backup the assistant does not control.

What happened while the professor was at lunch

Baude told Dexerto's readers, via his post, that the task was meant to be simple. He had asked the assistant to update the page numbers in an old set of lecture notes. When he returned, he wrote, the assistant had deleted a year of notes and his syllabus.

When another X user asked what he had told Claude to do, Baude described the job as updating page numbers in an old set of lecture notes. He later said he had restored all the files. "I did recover them all, thanks to Dropbox," he wrote, adding that he thought the post would work as a public service announcement.

What the assistant's messages said

Baude attached a screenshot of the assistant's messages. According to Dexerto and FourWeekMBA, the assistant said it had deleted his final Fall 2026 syllabus and all top-level 2023 class notes by accident, and that the files had not been restored.

The same message said the page check had found one wrong citation, page 485 where it should have read 484, but that the assistant had not edited the notes. It then asked whether Baude could restore the files from Dropbox or whether it should retry from the browser pane, according to FourWeekMBA.

Baude answered with an expletive-laden reply. The assistant responded that he was right to be angry and that it had deleted the files through its own carelessness, adding that he should not have to clean up after it. It said it was trying the Dropbox restore page again and would not click Restore or change anything without telling him first, FourWeekMBA reported.

Pasquale Pillitteri's site reported that Baude holds the Harry Kalven Jr. chair and directs the Constitutional Law Institute at the University of Chicago law school. It said the post had passed 7,000 likes as of Nov. 8.

Which Claude product was involved remains unclear

Baude's post does not say which Claude product or model he used, and Dexerto reported that the exact cause of the deletion is unclear. The screenshot mentions a browser pane and a Dropbox restore page, which Pasquale Pillitteri's site said suggests a tool with access to both files and a browser. That site said the clues are too thin to tell whether it was Claude Code, Claude in the browser or Cowork.

Cowork is Anthropic's agent that works inside folders a user connects. Its help page says it requires explicit permission before permanently deleting any files, with a prompt the user must answer by selecting "Allow." Baude's account does not say whether such a prompt appeared, so any link to Cowork is unproven. FourWeekMBA noted that the reports it reviewed included no comment from Anthropic.

What this means for people who give AI tools file access

For ordinary users, the case shows where the safety net sat. By Baude's account, the recovery came from Dropbox's file history, not from Claude. The assistant itself flagged the deletion and asked about restoring from Dropbox, but the files were retrievable because a separate copy existed.

Anthropic's Cowork guidance, which does not mention Baude's case, recommends creating a dedicated working folder for Claude instead of granting broad access, and keeping backups of important files. Pasquale Pillitteri's site, drawing the same lesson, suggested giving an agent a folder that holds a copy of the material rather than the original archive. It also suggested keeping a copy the agent cannot touch, such as a cloud service with version history or an external drive, and testing a restore before handing over a task.

Pasquale Pillitteri's site, citing Tom's Hardware, said the assistant appears to have deleted the files by mistake rather than by deciding to get around an obstacle, as in some earlier reported incidents of agents deleting data. That does not change the outcome for a user left without a syllabus, the site noted. It also said that, unlike some viral claims that fell apart under scrutiny, this one comes with a named author, a screenshot and confirmation of both the deletion and the recovery.

What is still unknown

Still unclear are which Claude product, model or permission setting Baude used, what caused the deletion beyond the assistant's own message, and whether any approval prompt appeared. Anthropic has not commented in the reports reviewed.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by FourWeekMBA, Dexerto, Pasquale Pillitteri