A federal judge in San Francisco ruled late Monday that Anthropic’s use of books without permission to train its artificial intelligence system was legal under U.S. copyright law. Siding with tech companies on a pivotal question for the AI industry, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Anthropic made “fair use” of books by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson to train its Claude large language model.
Alsup also said, however, that Anthropic’s storage of the authors’ books in a “central library” violated their copyrights and was not fair use. Spokespeople for Anthropic and attorneys for the authors did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling on Tuesday. The writers sued Anthropic last year, arguing that the company, which is backed by Amazon and Alphabet, used pirated versions of their books without permission or compensation to teach Claude to respond to human prompts. The class action lawsuit is one of several brought by authors, news outlets and other copyright owners against companies including OpenAI, Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab and Meta Platforms over their AI training. The doctrine of fair use allows the use of copyrighted works without the copyright owner’s permission in some circumstances.
Fair use is a key legal defense for the tech companies, and Alsup’s decision is the first to address it in the context of generative AI.

Full report : Key win for U.S. large language model makers as Anthropic wins authors’ copyright lawsuit.