Anthropic Scores a Landmark AI Copyright Win—but Will Face Trial Over Piracy Claims.

While the startup has won its “fair use” argument, it potentially faces billions of dollars in damages for allegedly pirating over 7 million books to build a digital library.

Anthropic has scored a major victory in an ongoing legal battle over artificial intelligence models and copyright, one that may reverberate across the dozens of other AI copyright lawsuits winding through the legal system in the United States. A court has determined that it was legal for Anthropic to train its AI tools on copyrighted works, arguing that the behavior is shielded by the “fair use” doctrine, which allows for unauthorized use of copyrighted materials under certain conditions.

“The training use was a fair use,” senior district judge William Alsup wrote in a summary judgment order released late Monday evening. In copyright law, one of the main ways courts determine whether using copyrighted works without permission is fair use is to examine whether the use was “transformative,” which means that it is not a substitute for the original work but rather something new. “The technology at issue was among the most transformative many of us will see in our lifetimes,” Alsup wrote.

https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-ai-copyright-fair-use-piracy-ruling/