Latest news with #JudgeAlsup
BBC News
11 hours ago
- Business
- BBC News
US Judge sides with AI firm Anthropic over copyright issue
A US judge has ruled that using books to train artificial intelligence (AI) software is not a violation of US copyright decision came out of a lawsuit brought last year against AI firm Anthropic by three writers, a novelist, and two non-fiction authors, who accused the firm of stealing their work to train its Claude AI model and build a multi-billion dollar business. In his ruling, Judge William Alsup wrote that Anthropic's use of the authors' books was "exceedingly transformative" and therefore allowed under US he rejected Anthropic's request to dismiss the case, ruling the firm would have to stand trial over its use of pirated copies to build their library of material. Anthropic, a firm backed by Amazon and Google's parent company, Alphabet, could face up to $150,000 in damages per copyrighted firm holds more than seven million pirated books in a "central library" according to the ruling is among the first to weigh in on a question that is the subject of numerous legal battles across the industry - how Large Language Models (LLMs) can legitimately learn from existing material."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," Judge Alsup wrote."If this training process reasonably required making copies within the LLM or otherwise, those copies were engaged in a transformative use," he noted that the authors did not claim that the training led to "infringing knockoffs" with replicas of their works being generated for users of the Claude they had, he wrote, "this would be a different case". Similar legal battles have emerged over the AI industry's use of other media and content, from journalistic articles to music and month, Disney and Universal filed a lawsuit against AI image generator Midjourney, accusing it of BBC is also considering legal action over the unauthorised use of its response to the legal battles, some AI companies have responded by striking deals with creators of the original materials, or their publishers, to license material for Alsup allowed Anthropic's "fair use" defence, paving the way for future legal judgements. However, he said Anthropic had violated the authors' rights by saving pirated copies of their books as part of a "central library of all the books in the world".In a statement Anthropic said it was pleased by the judge's recognition that its use of the works was transformative, but disagreed with the decision to hold a trial about how some of the books were obtained and used. The company said it remained confident in its case, and was evaluating its options.A lawyer for the authors declined to authors who brought the case are Andrea Bartz, a best-selling mystery thriller writer, whose novels include We Were Never Here and The Last Ferry Out, and non-fiction writers Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson.
Al Jazeera
19 hours ago
- Business
- Al Jazeera
US judge allows company to train AI using copyrighted literary materials
A United States federal judge has ruled that the company Anthropic made 'fair use' of the books it utilised to train artificial intelligence (AI) tools without the permission of the authors. The favourable ruling comes at a time when the impacts of AI are being discussed by regulators and policymakers, and the industry is using its political influence to push for a loose regulatory framework. 'Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic's LLMs [large language models] trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different,' US District Judge William Alsup said. A group of authors had filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that Anthropic's use of their work to train its chatbot, Claude, without their consent was illegal. But Alsup said that the AI system had not violated the safeguards in US copyright laws, which are designed for 'enabling creativity and fostering scientific progress'. He accepted Anthropic's claim that the AI's output was 'exceedingly transformative' and therefore fell under the 'fair use' protections. Alsup, however, did rule that Anthropic's copying and storage of seven million pirated books in a 'central library' infringed author copyrights and did not constitute fair use. The fair use doctrine, which allows limited use of copyrighted materials for creative purposes, has been employed by tech companies as they create generative AI. Technology developpers often sweeps up large swaths of existing material to train their AI models. Still, fierce debate continues over whether AI will facilitate greater artistic creativity or allow the mass-production of cheap imitations that render artists obsolete to the benefit of large companies. The writers who brought the lawsuit — Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson — alleged that Anthropic's practices amounted to 'large-scale theft', and that the company had sought to 'profit from strip-mining the human expression and ingenuity behind each one of those works'. While Tuesday's decision was considered a victory for AI developpers, Alsup nevertheless ruled that Anthropic must still go to trial in December over the alleged theft of pirated works. The judge wrote that the company had 'no entitlement to use pirated copies for its central library'.
Wall Street Journal
21 hours ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
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.
The Verge
a day ago
- Business
- The Verge
Anthropic wins a major fair use victory for AI — but it's still in trouble for stealing books
A federal judge has sided with Anthropic in an AI copyright case, ruling that training — and only training — its AI models on legally purchased books without authors' permission is fair use. It's a first-of-its-kind ruling in favor of the AI industry, but it's importantly limited specifically to physical books Anthropic purchased and digitized. Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California also says in his decision that the company must face a separate trial for pirating 'millions' of books from the internet. The decision also does not address whether the outputs of an AI model infringe copyrights, which is at issue in other related cases. The lawsuit was filed by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, who sued Anthropic last year over claims the company trained its family of Claude AI models on pirated material. It's a pivotal decision that could affect how judges respond to AI copyright cases going forward. The ruling also addresses Anthropic's move to purchase print copies of books, rip off their bindings, cut the pages, and scan them into a centralized digital library used to train its AI models. The judge ruled that digitizing a legally purchased physical book was fair use, and that using those digital copies to train an LLM was sufficiently transformative to also be fair use. 'Authors' complaint is no different than it would be if they complained that training schoolchildren to write well would result in an explosion of competing works,' Judge Alsup writes, adding that the Copyright Act 'seeks to advance original works of authorship, not to protect authors against competition.' Despite these wins for Anthropic, Judge Alsup writes that Anthropic's decision to store millions of pirated book copies in the company's central library — even if some weren't used for training — isn't considered fair use. 'This order doubts that any accused infringer could ever meet its burden of explaining why downloading source copies from pirate sites that it could have purchased or otherwise accessed lawfully was itself reasonably necessary to any subsequent fair use,' Alsup writes (emphasis his). Judge Alsup says the court will hold a separate trial on the pirated content used by Anthropic, which will determine the resulting damages.
