Federal court: copyrighted books are fair use for Al training

A FEDERAL judge this week ruled that artificial intelligence company Anthropic did not break the law when it used copyrighted books to train its chatbot, Claude, without the consent of the texts' authors or publishers - but he ordered the company to go to trial for allegedly using pirated versions of the books.

- WASHINGTON POST

The decision, made last week by Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, represents a win for AI companies, which have battled copyright lawsuits from writers and news organisations for using their work to train AI systems.

Alsup said Anthropic's use of the books to train its large language models, was like an aspiring writer who reads copyrighted texts “not to race ahead and replicate or supplant” those works, “but to turn a hard corner and create something different.”

His ruling was on a lawsuit filed against Anthropic last year by three authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson - who alleged that the company used their work without their consent to train AI systems in what amounted to “large-scale theft.”