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Anthropic Destroys Millions of Books to Train Claude AI, Court Documents Show

aiai-governanceai-legal-safety 15 posts · 9 accounts

Court documents show Anthropic spent millions of dollars to purchase, cut the bindings of, and scan millions of physical books to train its Claude artificial intelligence model. The company discarded the scanned copies after conversion and executed the practice under a 2024 internal initiative code-named Project Panama.

Internal planning documents instructed staff that the initiative should remain undisclosed. The details emerged in a federal fair use ruling that granted the practice legal protection, prompting broader discussion over how artificial intelligence developers acquire and retain copyrighted materials.

From the sources (15 posts)

@wesroth

I assumed this was bs and prepared a snarky tweet... then decided to see if it is indeed true ...looks like it is a lot of this came out in the court case against Anthropic for pirating stuff, this was one of the things that got discover

@_nathancalvin

“The fix doesn't require reopening the copyright fight. Just screen bulk orders against census counts and pull any rare title. Deposit one scan of every destroyed book in a public archive. Maybe rebind truly unusual books. Congress should b

@brianroemmele

Confirmation of Anthropic’s BOOK BURNING for their AI: The Great Forgetting of the Amnesia Generation In the quiet warehouses and shipping docks of 2024, Anthropic did not merely train an AI. It staged a quiet erasure of human knowledge.

@xlr8harder

Btw, the books are shredded after scanning to ensure copyright liability is minimized. Unintended consequences suck, huh?

@brianroemmele

RT @LilithDatura: @BrianRoemmele "They meant the word “destructively.” Anthropic spent tens of millions of dollars buying used books in bul…

@brianroemmele

RT @LilithDatura: "Now look at Anthropic. In early 2024 the company launched an internal effort it code-named Project Panama. An unsealed…

@trenttelenko

RT @itsolelehmann: btw anthropic's internal document on this literally said "we don't want it to be known that we are working on this.” it…

@trenttelenko

RT @BrianRoemmele: Some folks don’t believe that a “principled AI company” would destroy books after they suck out all the information for…

@johnrobb

More on Anthropic destroying millions of books: "court documents revealed that AI company Anthropic spent millions of dollars physically scanning print books to build Claude, an AI assistant similar to ChatGPT. In the process, the company

@brianroemmele

RT @DavidSacks: Anthropic maintains that it is entitled to train for free on all the world’s output, even if the author objects. But if a c…

@rnaudbertrand

RT @DavidSacks: Anthropic maintains that it is entitled to train for free on all the world’s output, even if the author objects. But if a c…

@dissidentclint

RT @DavidSacks: Anthropic maintains that it is entitled to train for free on all the world’s output, even if the author objects. But if a c…

@kimmaicutler

RT @JoshuaSteinman: Here’s an idea for @sama @DarioAmodei et al: - buy the books - scan the books - employ the best book binders and book…

@brianroemmele

RT @BrianRoemmele: Confirmation of Anthropic’s BOOK BURNING for their AI: The Great Forgetting of the Amnesia Generation In the quiet ware…

@brianroemmele

RT @BrianRoemmele: Some folks don’t believe that a “principled AI company” would destroy books after they suck out all the information for…

Preview built on a synthetic news corpus (16 weeks, Apr–Jul 2026). Impact calls are model reads, not price data.

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