tech
Why is Anthropic destroying books?
The AI company apparently found destructively scanning ‘all the books in the world’ easier than dealing with copyright in its quest for training data
TL;DR
- Anthropic's 'Project Panama' involved destructively scanning books to create a high-quality dataset for training its AI model, Claude.
- The process involved vendors slicing book spines and discarding original copies after scanning.
- A lawsuit, Bartz v Anthropic PBC, highlighted this practice, resulting in a $1.5 billion out-of-court settlement with authors.
- The court ruled that using proprietary material to 'train' an LLM did not, in itself, constitute copyright infringement.
- The practice raises concerns about the future of books as cultural heritage and the role of human authors in an AI-dominated landscape.