Anthropic Destroyed Millions of Books to Train Claude, Backed by $1.5 Billion Copyright Settlement
Updated
Updated · Mashable · Aug 8
Anthropic Destroyed Millions of Books to Train Claude, Backed by $1.5 Billion Copyright Settlement
3 articles · Updated · Mashable · Aug 8
Summary
A June 2025 court order showed Anthropic bought and dismantled millions of print books, scanning them for Claude training and discarding the originals under a project called Panama.
Judge William Alsup said the company spent many millions of dollars on used books because books were the most cost-effective path to a world-class LLM, with vendors cutting spines and feeding pages through industrial scanners.
The order said that physical-to-digital conversion could qualify as fair use because each destroyed copy was replaced by one digital copy, but Anthropic still admitted using millions of pirated books as well.
That broader authors' lawsuit has now produced an approved $1.5 billion copyright settlement, while the disclosure has intensified scrutiny of destructive scanning practices across the AI industry.