Overview

• Federal Judge William Alsup held that training Anthropic’s Claude model on copyrighted books constitutes fair use, noting AI’s learning mirrors human reading
• The ruling exempted lawfully acquired texts but found the use of millions of pirated book copies to be a copyright violation
• A civil trial has been scheduled to quantify damages for unauthorized works, with penalties of up to $150,000 per title
• Anthropic, valued at $61.5 billion and backed by Amazon, said the outcome affirms its responsible innovation approach and industry practices
• A parallel fair use decision for Meta this week signals a growing legal precedent likely to shape how AI firms source training data