Judge rules Anthropic’s AI training on copyrighted materials is fair use

Anthropic has a mixed result in a class action lawsuit brought by a group of authors who claimed the company used their copyrighted creations without permission. On the positive side for the artificial intelligence company, senior district judge William Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California determined that Anthropic’s training of its AI tools on copyrighted works was protected as fair use.

Developing large language models for artificial intelligence has created a copyright law boondoggle as creators attempt to protect their works and tech companies or to gather more training materials. Alsup’s ruling is one of the first that will likely set the foundation for legal precedents around what AI tools can and cannot do.

Using copyright materials can be deemed fair use if the output is determined to be “transformative,” or not a substitute for the original work. “The technology at issue was among the most transformative many of us will see in our lifetimes,” Alsup .

Despite the fair use designation, the ruling does still provide some recourse for the writers; they can choose to take Anthropic to court for piracy. “Anthropic downloaded over seven million pirated copies of books, paid nothing, and kept these pirated copies in its library even after deciding it would not use them to train its AI (at all or ever again),” Alsup wrote. “Authors argue Anthropic should have paid for these pirated library copies. This order agrees.”