Judge Allows Nationwide Class Action Against Anthropic Over Alleged Piracy of 7 Million Books For AI Training

A California federal judge has ruled that three authors suing Anthropic for copyright infringement can represent writers nationwide whose books the AI startup allegedly pirated to train its Claude chatbot.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said the authors can bring a class action on behalf of all U.S. writers whose works Anthropic allegedly downloaded from pirate libraries LibGen and PiLiMi to create a repository of millions of books in 2021 and 2022.

Alsup said Anthropic may have illegally downloaded as many as 7 million books from the pirate websites, which could make it liable for billions of dollars in damages if the authors' case succeeds.

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