Advanced ML products are forbidden[0] to export to many places, so those who skimp on KYC are playing with fire. Paid products do not have this issue since you provide a billing address, but there is no good, free, and legal LLM that does not use a reliable way of verifying at least user’s location.

Whether they are serious about it or use it as an excuse to collect more PII (or both/neither), collecting verified phone numbers presumably allows them to demonstrate compliance.

[0] https://cset.georgetown.edu/article/dont-forget-the-catch-al...

> but there is no good, free, and legal LLM that does not use a reliable way of verifying at least user’s location.

In the US, other locations may/may not have the same export controls. Base your AI business in one of the non-US countries and it'll be legal to not keep strict controls on who is using your service.

For API access I didn’t need to provide a phone number. I use it with a selfhosted lobechat instance without problems.

For one, to avoid massive number of bots using the API for free.

I definitely had to give up a number when registering for chatGPT.

Same here. I can understand, they don't want their usage to go over the roof with fake accts

I'm not affiliated with Claude, but assuming you're serious:

> Umm... why?

https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/8287232-why-do-i-n...

My guess is, these models are incredibly expensive to run, Claude has a fairly generous free tier, and phone numbers are one of the easiest ways to significantly reduce the number of duplicate accounts.

> Nobody else in the AI space wants to track my number.

Given they're likely hoovering up all of the data you're sending to them, and they have your email address to identify you, this seems like an odd hill to die on.