00:00AI companies have been accused of allegedly destroying bulk loads of old
00:04and rare books in order to train their large language models. A copyright
00:09lawsuit brought against USA-based AI company Anthropic revealed that the
00:14company was engaging in a practice known as destructive scanning in order to
00:19train its large language model Claude. To scan the books most efficiently the
00:24company has allegedly been slicing off the spines of physical books and pulping
00:29its pages afterwards. In some cases it's been reported that the destroyed books
00:34are among the last surviving copies of that original work. The lawsuit alleged
00:40that the project, known as Project Panama, was intended to be kept a secret from
00:45the public. According to internal memos seen during the court case, Anthropic
00:50employees and bosses describe the project like this. What is Project Panama?
00:55Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the
01:00world. Why use a code name? Because we don't want it to be known that we're
01:05working on this. The judge ruled the AI companies had acted according to US
01:11copyright law because the scanning process amounted to a transformative use of the
01:16books. If the AI companies sought to teach their language models off existing
01:21digital works, for example, via already scanned ebooks, the companies would have
01:26been required to secure copyright permissions from the tax owners. Rather
01:32than seek this permission, Anthropic originally chose to use pirated sources, a
01:37decision that costed the company $1.5 billion in out-of-settlement costs to the
01:43authors. To avoid incurring the further legal costs, the company turned to the
01:48destructive method of book transformation. And in an ironic twist, the AI companies
01:54were forced to reveal that they were buying and hoarding large quantities of
01:58books, preferably created before 2022, to ensure the models were being trained on
02:04human thought, and to avoid cannibalizing the corrupting influence of any AI
02:10generated content in new works. Anthropic said it hoped that the book's well curated
02:15facts, well-organized analysis, and captivating fictional narratives would help
02:21Claude write as accurately and as compellingly as human authors. As always, the
02:27genius of human minds is still required.
