Why is Anthropic destroying books? | Kathryn James | TheBriefWire
Why is Anthropic destroying books? | Kathryn James
Published 5 August 2026 ¡ us
The AI company apparently found destructively scanning âall the books in the worldâ easier than dealing with copyright in its quest for training data Should
The AI company apparently found destructively scanning âall the books in the worldâ easier than dealing with copyright in its quest for training data Should we destroy all the books in the world?
An answer to this question can be found in the court documents of Bartz v Anthropic PBC. The northern California district court case, decided in late July this year, highlighted the improbably named âProject Panamaâ, one of the AI company Anthropicâs efforts to improve its large language model Claude.
âWhat is Project Panama?â court exhibit 21 asks, in an internal memo. The answer: âProject Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world.â The memo advises discretion: âWhy use a codename?
⌠[B]ecause we donât want it to be known that we are working on this.â Continue reading...
Published: August 5, 2026 ⢠4:30 PM IST ¡ Updated: August 5, 2026 ⢠5:09 PM ISTBy TheBriefWire Editorial Team
Key points
The AI company apparently found destructively scanning âall the books in the worldâ easier than dealing with copyright in its quest for training data Should we destroy all the books in the world?
An answer to this question can be found in the court documents of Bartz v Anthropic PBC.
The northern California district court case, decided in late July this year, highlighted the improbably named âProject Panamaâ, one of the AI company Anthropicâs efforts to improve its large language model Claude.
âWhat is Project Panama?â court exhibit 21 asks, in an internal memo.
The answer: âProject Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world.â The memo advises discretion: âWhy use a codename?
The BriefWire