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00:02Anthropic spent millions of dollars buying and destroying print books
00:05to build the training data set for its clawed AI model, according to Ars Technica.
00:10The company purchased used books in bulk, removed their bindings,
00:14scanned the pages into digital files, and discarded the originals.
00:18Judge William Alsup ruled the process, qualified as fair use because Anthropic legally bought the
00:23books, kept the digital copies for internal use, and did not distribute them. The ruling also
00:28revealed Anthropic had previously relied on pirated e-books before shifting to purchase books for
00:33legal reasons. The company hired a former Google Books executive in 2024 to help expand its book
00:39acquisition and scanning effort. For all things money, visit benzinga.com.
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