A US judge has ruled that Anthropic’s use of legally purchased books to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models falls under fair use.
According to a June 23 filing, Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California stated that converting a printed book into a digital file for training an AI model is permitted, provided the company owns the copyright to the book.
He explained that this process is different enough from the book’s original purpose to be considered fair use. However, he made clear that the ruling only applies to books that Anthropic lawfully purchased.
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The case was brought by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson. They accused Anthropic of using large numbers of pirated books to train its Claude AI models.
Alsup described how Anthropic’s team would buy print books, remove the bindings, scan the pages, and then use the text to build its AI system. He said this use was fair because it helped create something new and did not replace the original works.
However, the judge criticized Anthropic for downloading millions of titles from pirate websites. He stated that it is hard to see how that could be justified.
He noted that getting books from illegal sources instead of buying them undermines any claim of fair use. A separate trial will be held to decide how much Anthropic might have to pay for that.
Meanwhile, Disney and Universal have recently taken legal action against Midjourney, an AI image generation company. What happened? Read the full story.
Having completed a Master’s degree in Economics, Politics, and Cultures of the East Asia region, Aaron has written scientific papers analyzing the differences between Western and Collective forms of capitalism in the post-World War II era.With close to a decade of experience in the FinTech industry, Aaron understands all of the biggest issues and struggles that crypto enthusiasts face. He’s a passionate analyst who is concerned with data-driven and fact-based content, as well as that which speaks to both Web3 natives and industry newcomers.Aaron is the go-to person for everything and anything related to digital currencies. With a huge passion for blockchain & Web3 education, Aaron strives to transform the space as we know it, and make it more approachable to complete beginners.Aaron has been quoted by multiple established outlets, and is a published author himself. Even during his free time, he enjoys researching the market trends, and looking for the next supernova.
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