US Court: AI Training on Books May Be Fair Use, But Pirated Downloads Illegal

A US court ruled that AI firm Anthropic did not violate copyright law by using books to train its Claude AI model, as the act qualifies as "fair use" under US Copyright Law.

However, the court held that storing over 7 million pirated books was illegal. The judge stated that while AI training is transformative, downloading pirated copies instead of purchasing them violates the law.

The authors had sued Anthropic for copyright infringement. A jury trial is set for December to determine damages, which could reach up to $150,000 per book.