Anthropic wins AI copyright ruling
26-Jun-2025.
In a ruling that could have wide-ranging implications for the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, a federal judge in San Francisco has reportedly decided that Anthropic's use of copyrighted books to train its AI model Claude falls under "fair use".
However, the same court also found that Anthropic had infringed copyright by storing pirated copies of books in a digital library, according to a report by Reuters.
The decision, handed down on Monday by US District Judge William Alsup, is seen as a partial victory for the AI firm.
The judge concluded that Anthropic's use of the authors' books for training its AI was legal, describing the use as "exceedingly transformative" and in line with the principles of fair use outlined in US copyright law.
"Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic's LLMs trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them – but to turn a hard corner and create something different," said Judge Alsup.
