Authors Initiate Lawsuit Against Anthropic Alleging Unauthorized Use of Their Works
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Three authors have filed a lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic, alleging the firm used their copyrighted works without permission to train its Claude language models.
Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson filed a complaint in a California court, accusing Anthropic of having “pirated” their written material to develop its AI systems. The authors claim Anthropic downloaded pirated versions of their books from illegal websites to use as training data.
The lawsuit alleges Anthropic “built a multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books.” It states the company “ignored copyright protections” and engaged in “large scale theft of copyrighted works” to train its Claude models.
Anthropic has made no significant response to the allegations, merely stating they are “aware” of the ongoing legal proceedings. This is part of a larger legal trend where companies like Microsoft and OpenAI face similar challenges for their use of copyrighted content in developing sophisticated language models, pointing to a rise in disputes over intellectual property rights between content creators and AI enterprises.
The lawsuit claims that Anthropic relied on a dataset known as ‘The Pile’ for training its Claude model. Within this dataset was ‘Books3’, a collection of nearly 200,000 books allegedly sourced from unauthorized channels.
The authors contend that Anthropic was aware of utilizing copyrighted works without permission. They accuse the firm of opting to “cut corners and rely on stolen materials for their training models” instead of securing appropriate licenses.
The legal action asserts that such practices by Anthropic have undercut authors, causing a loss in book sales and licensing fees. Further, it claims the company’s AI models are now direct competitors to human authors, posing a serious threat to their financial security.
Anthropic is presenting its Claude models as competitors to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and similar AI chatbots, boasting significant funding and a valuation surpassing $18 billion.
There is a growing debate over whether AI companies should pay authors and publishers for utilizing their works for training purposes. Some entities, like Google, have started entering into licensing agreements with news organizations and other content creators.
AI developers, on the other hand, maintain that the use of copyrighted material in machine learning is protected under the fair use rights of copyright laws, arguing that their models don’t create verbatim reproductions of the texts used.
This ongoing discussion raises complex legal and ethical issues regarding the application of copyright laws to AI development, potentially requiring judicial determinations on whether AI training involves copyright violation or counts as transformative use.
For authors, the lawsuit represents an effort to assert control over how their works are used in AI development. They argue that companies profiting from AI should compensate creators whose material made the technology possible.
The case could have significant implications for the AI industry if courts rule that firms must obtain licences for all copyrighted material used in training. This would likely increase costs and complexity for AI development.
Anthropic has focused on developing “safe and ethical” AI systems. The company’s CEO has described it as “focused on public benefit.” However, the authors’ lawsuit challenges this image, accusing Anthropic of building its business through copyright infringement.
The complaint seeks statutory damages for alleged wilful copyright infringement and an injunction to prevent Anthropic from further using the authors’ works without permission.
As AI technology advances, the battle over intellectual property rights is heating up. Content creators are insisting on protection and fair compensation for their work, while AI enterprises argue for unrestricted access to extensive datasets to enhance their technologies.
This particular lawsuit against Anthropic could set a precedent, affecting how laws and regulations are structured around AI development. This might change how businesses gather training data and if licensing on a large scale becomes standard practice.
The current legal action is among several others that major AI companies are facing concerning the use of copyrighted content. The outcomes of these legal disputes are set to play a crucial role in shaping the landscape of AI and content creation in the future.
The legal case has been registered as Andrea Bartz et al. v. Anthropic PBC, at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:24-cv-05417.
(Photo courtesy of Anthropic)
See also: Anthropic says Claude 3 Haiku is the fastest model in its class
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