This week, two federal judges ruled in favor of AI companies Anthropic and Meta, allowing them to use books without permission for training their artificial intelligence models. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, in a San Francisco court, determined that authors failed to provide sufficient evidence to support their copyright infringement claims against Meta.
While he acknowledged the concerns raised by the authors, he emphasized that their arguments did not adequately establish a legal basis for their case. Judge Chhabria clarified that his ruling does not imply that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials is lawful; rather, it reflects that the plaintiffs were unsuccessful in framing their case correctly.
Meanwhile, Judge William Alsup issued a separate ruling on Anthropic, which highlighted a mixed outcome. Although Alsup cited “fair use” in allowing the company to utilize certain literary works for their Claude AI model, he also recognized that Anthropic’s actions of copying and storing over seven million unauthorized books constituted copyright infringement.
A trial is set for December to assess the damages owed by Anthropic to the affected authors. The concept of fair use is crucial for technology companies, serving as a primary defense against copyright claims.
AI firms argue they create transformative content that should not necessitate compensation to original authors. However, concerns persist about AI potentially flooding the market with content created in a fraction of the time and effort.
Chhabria noted that this could significantly undermine the market for traditional works, diminishing the motivation for human creativity in producing original content.
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