Judge rules Anthropic did not violate authors' copyrights with AI book training
The decision is a major win for AI companies as legal battles play out over the use and application of copyrighted works in LLMs
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Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO, speaking on CNBC's Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21st, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
Anthropic's use of books to train its artificial intelligence model Claude was "fair use" and "transformative," a federal judge ruled late on Monday.
Amazon-backed Anthropic's AI training did not violate the authors' copyrights since the large language models "have not reproduced to the public a given work's creative elements, nor even one author's identifiable expressive style," wrote U.S. District Judge William Alsup.
"The purpose and character of using copyrighted works to train LLMs to generate new text was quintessentially transformative," Alsup wrote. "Like any reader aspiring to be a writer."
The decision was a significant win for AI companies as legal battles play out over the use and application of copyrighted works in developing and training LLMs. Alsup's ruling begins to establish the legal limits and opportunities for the industry going forward.
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A spokesperson for Anthropic said in a statement that the company was "pleased" with the ruling and that the decision was, "Consistent with copyright's purpose in enabling creativity and fostering scientific progress."
CNBC has reached out to the plaintiffs for comment.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was brought by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson in August. The suit alleged that Anthropic built a "multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books."
Part of the lawsuit centers around a set of roughly 7 million books that Anthropic pirated and retained as part of a "central library." The startup ultimately decided against using these pirated materials for training its LLMs.
Alsup ordered a trial for how the pirated books were used to create Anthropic's central library, which will evaluate any resulting damages.
"That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for the theft, but it may affect the extent of statutory damages," the judge wrote.
