In a landmark decision, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that Anthropic did not violate copyright law by training its AI models on published books without author permission, affirming the company’s argument that such use falls under the fair use doctrine. This marks the first significant judicial endorsement of AI companies’ right to train large language models using copyrighted materials.
The ruling delivers a major blow to authors and publishers pursuing similar cases against OpenAI, Meta, Google, and others. However, the court will still hold trial proceedings over Anthropic’s alleged use of pirated books to build a “central library.” Alsup stated this issue could impact statutory damages despite the fair use ruling.
