Anthropic Lands Partial Victory in AI Case Set to Shape Future Rulings
A federal judge found that the startup Anthropic's use of books to train its artificial-intelligence models was legal in some circumstances, a ruling that could have broad implications for AI and intellectual property.
Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California ruled Monday that Anthropic's use of copyrighted books for AI model training was legal under U.S. copyright law if it had purchased those books. The ruling is set to help shape future litigation against AI companies, legal experts said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fast Company
21 minutes ago
- Fast Company
The power of a customer-first strategy
I would argue that the most important indicator of a brand's health is customer loyalty. For leaders, building and sustaining strong customer loyalty is the holy grail. Leaders talk a lot about how to win customer loyalty, and sometimes that could mean getting caught up in chasing the newest shiny object, silver bullet, or trend. To avoid that chase, I've made a point of rooting myself in an approach that sounds basic on the surface, but is truly transformative: making customers the true center of every decision. This isn't a reactive strategy during tough times—it's a proactive philosophy that builds resilience and clarity before you need it. When you remain centered on prioritizing customer needs and experiences, you create a foundation of trust and understanding that fosters long-term loyalty. The human connection in a digital world Technology has improved access to customers in a lot of ways, but it has also created distance. I got to thinking about this after reading a recent LinkedIn post from my colleague Dennis Kozak, written after he toured colleges with his daughter. He said his daughter could sense 'which interactions felt authentic versus those that were rote, detached, and rehearsed.' These were in-person interactions, which should be immune to detachment. But we've all become so accustomed to digitally-driven detachment that it seems our interpersonal standards have shifted. The innate ability to detect authenticity isn't limited to campus tours—it's fundamental to every interaction, especially customer interactions. I am all for the efficiencies gained from AI chatbots, automated systems, and digital interfaces, yet there needs to be a balance between technology and the human element to effectively build true connections. When everyone uses the same technology solutions, genuine human engagement becomes your true differentiator. Demonstrating your ability to understand and connect is crucial in maintaining strong connections with others and is ultimately best left to people, not machines. These qualities foster loyalty, trust, and genuine relationships. Use values as your customer compass The principles that guide your personal decisions should extend to how you prioritize customer needs. I've found that grounding myself in integrity, authenticity, and teamwork creates a framework for customer-centric decision making. Integrity means doing what's right for customers, even—and especially —when facing tough choices and challenging times. Making customers central means that the choice becomes clear if you are making hard choices that prioritize their needs over short-term business interests. Every commitment represents an opportunity to demonstrate that you genuinely value their success as much as your own. 'Authenticity' kind of sounds like corporate buzz speak, but to me, it's very real. It shows up as consistency between what you promise and what you deliver. Back on campus, Dennis said people can immediately tell which representatives were 'passionate about the school and genuinely wanted her to be part of it versus those monotoning from a script while thinking about how soon they could be done with the conversation.' We've all had customer experiences where we felt like the person on the other side was just going through the motions, right? And I hope we've all had the opposite experience, too, when we truly felt seen and heard, like our experience mattered. What a difference! See beyond immediate transactions One great (or terrible) interaction can make or break a customer relationship, but the strongest customer relationships are built over time with consistent engagement. These bonds form when you demonstrate understanding beyond the immediate problem. For example, if a customer contacts your company because they're frustrated about a glitch, it's important to address the glitch. But it's not just about the glitch. It's about the lost productivity, the time spent needing to find contact info and reach out, and concerns about whether they can trust the product in the future. What can you do about that? Technology can actually enhance this understanding when applied thoughtfully. While AI raises legitimate concerns about depersonalization, I've found it can be an unexpected ally in customer centricity when used to augment rather than replace human judgment. By synthesizing different viewpoints from across the organization, we develop more effective responses that truly address customer needs when responding to complex situations. Technology can improve the functional aspects of customer experiences while humans address the intangible elements. Humanize the digital experience As technology continues to rise toward dominance, I think we're at an inflection point: Do we allow digital efficiency to create emotional distance, or deliberately design human connection into every touchpoint? This balance between humans and machines doesn't happen accidentally. It requires deliberately designing customer journeys that incorporate genuine human touchpoints at pivotal moments—especially during those times when trust is tested and either strengthened or broken. When you put customer needs first in good times and in bad (not to sound like wedding vows here!), customers trust that their needs remain your priority, no matter what. These customers are so much more likely to ride out tough times with you and not only stay loyal to the company, but serve as vocal brand advocates who share their experience with others. Now that is the holy grail.
The Hill
22 minutes ago
- The Hill
Judge dismisses authors' copyright lawsuit against Meta over AI training
A federal judge on Wednesday sided with Facebook parent Meta Platforms in dismissing a copyright infringement lawsuit from a group of authors who accused the company of stealing their works to train its artificial intelligence technology. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabri was the second in a week from San Francisco's federal court to dismiss major copyright claims from book authors against the rapidly developing AI industry. Chhabri found that 13 authors who sued Meta 'made the wrong arguments' and tossed the case. But the judge also said that the ruling is limited to the authors in the case and does not mean that Meta's use of copyrighted materials is lawful. Lawyers for the plaintiffs — a group of well-known writers that includes comedian Sarah Silverman and authors Jacqueline Woodson and Ta-Nehisi Coates — didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Meta also didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. 'This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta's use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful,' Chhabri wrote. 'It stands only for the proposition that these plaintiffs made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one.' On Monday, from the same courthouse, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that AI company Anthropic didn't break the law by training its chatbot Claude on millions of copyrighted books, but the company must still go to trial for illicitly acquiring those books from pirate websites instead of buying them. But the actual process of an AI system distilling from thousands of written works to be able to produce its own passages of text qualified as 'fair use' under U.S. copyright law because it was 'quintessentially transformative,' Alsup wrote. Chhabria, in his Meta ruling, criticized Alsup's reasoning on the Anthropic case, arguing that 'Alsup focused heavily on the transformative nature of generative AI while brushing aside concerns about the harm it can inflict on the market for the works it gets trained on.' Chhabria suggested that a case for such harm can be made. In the Meta case, the authors had argued in court filings that Meta is 'liable for massive copyright infringement' by taking their books from online repositories of pirated works and feeding them into Meta's flagship generative AI system Llama. Lengthy and distinctively written passages of text — such as those found in books — are highly useful for teaching generative AI chatbots the patterns of human language. 'Meta could and should have paid' to buy and license those literary works, the authors' attorneys argued. Meta countered in court filings that U.S. copyright law 'allows the unauthorized copying of a work to transform it into something new' and that the new, AI-generated expression that comes out of its chatbots is fundamentally different from the books it was trained on. 'After nearly two years of litigation, there still is no evidence that anyone has ever used Llama as a substitute for reading Plaintiffs' books, or that they even could,' Meta's attorneys argued. Meta says Llama won't output the actual works it has copied, even when asked to do so. 'No one can use Llama to read Sarah Silverman's description of her childhood, or Junot Diaz's story of a Dominican boy growing up in New Jersey,' its attorneys wrote. Accused of pulling those books from online 'shadow libraries,' Meta has also argued that the methods it used have 'no bearing on the nature and purpose of its use' and it would have been the same result if the company instead struck a deal with real libraries. Such deals are how Google built its online Google Books repository of more than 20 million books, though it also fought a decade of legal challenges before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 let stand lower court rulings that rejected copyright infringement claims. The authors' case against Meta forced CEO Mark Zuckerberg to be deposed, and has disclosed internal conversations at the company over the ethics of tapping into pirated databases that have long attracted scrutiny. 'Authorities regularly shut down their domains and even prosecute the perpetrators,' the authors' attorneys argued in a court filing. 'That Meta knew taking copyrighted works from pirated databases could expose the company to enormous risk is beyond dispute: it triggered an escalation to Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta executives for approval. Their gamble should not pay off.' 'Whatever the merits of generative artificial intelligence, or GenAI, stealing copyrighted works off the Internet for one's own benefit has always been unlawful,' they argued. The named plaintiffs are Jacqueline Woodson, Richard Kadrey, Andrew Sean Greer, Rachel Louise Snyder, David Henry Hwang, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Laura Lippman, Matthew Klam, Junot Diaz, Sarah Silverman, Lysa TerKeurst, Christopher Golden and Christopher Farnsworth. Most of the plaintiffs had asked Chhabria to rule now, rather than wait for a jury trial, on the basic claim of whether Meta infringed on their copyrights. Two of the plaintiffs, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christopher Golden, did not seek such summary judgment. Chhabri said in the ruling that while he had 'no choice' but to grant Meta's summary judgment tossing the case, 'in the grand scheme of things, the consequences of this ruling are limited. This is not a class action, so the ruling only affects the rights of these 13 authors — not the countless others whose works Meta used to train its models.'
Bloomberg
22 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
US Allows Ethane Cargoes to Sail to China After Inventories Soar
The Trump administration has slightly eased recent export limits on a petroleum gas that's used to make plastics — a shift that represents a modest pullback on curbs used as leverage in trade negotiations with China. Under the change, Enterprise Products Partners LP and Energy Transfer LP are being allowed to load that gas, known as ethane, onto tankers and transport it to Chinese ports. However, they are still barred from unloading that cargo for use by Chinese entities, said people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named.
