Anthropic Sued: $75M for Pirating Books to Train Claude AI

Anthropic faces a new lawsuit for allegedly pirating books to train its Claude AI. Over 100 authors are seeking more than $75 million in damages. The suit claims Anthropic downloaded over 500 copyrighted books from shadow libraries. This includes works by authors like Tiffany Aliche and Laura Esquivel. This follows an earlier settlement where approximately 482,000 pirated works led to a $1.5 billion payout. A judicial ruling previously stated that training AI on legally acquired books is fair use, but downloading pirated copies is not. The court found that roughly 7 million pirated books were stored during training operations. This new lawsuit focuses on the act of piracy and storage. The outcome could significantly impact how AI companies acquire data for training.