A federal judge has ruled for the first time that humanity, a $61.5 billion AI startup, is legal, to train AI models on copyrighted books without compensating or crediting the author.
A US district judge in San Francisco said in a ruling filed Monday that the use of published books copyrighted to train AI models is “fair use” under US copyright laws, as it is “very transformative.” Alsup has learned how to become a writer by reading books, with the aim of creating new works, comparing situations with human readers.
“Like readers who want to be authors, humanity [AI] To race first, to recreate, to train works that will replace them, to turn hard corners and create something different,” writes Alsup.
According to the ruling, it was fair use for humanity to use copyrighted books as Claude's training material, but the court will hold a trial on the pirated books used to create the central library of humanity, and determine the resulting damages.
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The ruling was the first federal judge to side with high-tech companies via creative in AI copyright cases, creating a court precedent that favors AI companies over individuals in AI copyright disputes.
These copyright cases rely on how judges interpret the doctrine of fair use. This is a concept of copyright law that allows the use of copyright law without permission from the copyright owner. Fair use judgments will depend on how different the final work is from the original, what the final work is used, and whether it is replicated for commercial interest.
Plaintiffs in class action cases, Andrea Burtz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, are authors who allegedly used the work to train chatbots without permission. They first complained in August 2024, Bartzv. He submitted anthropic and claimed that humanity violated copyright laws, organized books and replicated them to train AI chatbots.
Details of the decision that humanity has downloaded millions of copyrighted books for free from pirate sites. The startup also purchased printed copies of copyrighted books, some of which were already in pirated libraries. Employees tore the bindings in these books, cut back on pages, scanned, saved them in digital files, and added them to a central digital library.
From this central library, humanity has selected various groups of digitalised books to train Claude, the AI chatbot.
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The judge ruled that because Claude's output was “transformative,” humanity was permitted to use copyrighted works under the doctrine of fair use. However, humanity must go to court over a book that has become pirated.
“Humanity had no right to use pirated copies in the Central Library,” reads Domination.
Claude has proven to be advantageous. The ruling said that humanity earned more than $1 billion in annual revenue last year from clients and individuals from companies who pay subscription fees to use AI chatbots last year. Paid Claude subscriptions range from $20 per month to $100 per month.
Humanity is facing another lawsuit from Reddit. In a complaint filed earlier this month in a Northern California court, Reddit alleged that humanity used the site for AI training materials without permission.
A federal judge has ruled for the first time that humanity, a $61.5 billion AI startup, is legal, to train AI models on copyrighted books without compensating or crediting the author.
A US district judge in San Francisco said in a ruling filed Monday that the use of published books copyrighted to train AI models is “fair use” under US copyright laws, as it is “very transformative.” Alsup has learned how to become a writer by reading books, with the aim of creating new works, comparing situations with human readers.
“Like readers who want to be authors, humanity [AI] To race first, to recreate, to train works that will replace them, to turn hard corners and create something different,” writes Alsup.
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