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New: Unsealed court docs detail Big Tech’s yearslong, secret race to ingest the collective works of humanity, including Anthropic’s project to “destructively scan all the books in the world.” Gift link: wapo.st/4rjXAMQ

wapo.stHow Silicon Valley built AI: Buying, scanning and destroying millions of booksCourt filings reveal how AI companies raced to obtain more books to feed chatbots, including by buying, scanning and disposing of millions of titles.

Will Oremus

@willoremus.com

27 Jan

Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books to oversee its secret "Project Panama," new court docs show — quietly buying millions of used books in bulk, breaking their spines and scanning them to feed into its Claude chatbot. wapo.st/4rjXAMQ

Will Oremus

@willoremus.com

27 Jan

Anthropic's project to "destructively scan all the books in the world" was actually viewed as the *more* ethical and legally sound approach to training its AI. Previously the industry standard had been simply to pirate vast "shadow libraries" of digitized books for free online. wapo.st/4rjXAMQ

Will Oremus

@willoremus.com

Props to @ashleybelanger.bsky.social at Ars Technica, Ernesto Van der Sar at Torrent Freak, @alexreisner.bsky.social for The Atlantic and others who have done excellent previous reporting on Big Tech's race to ingest the world's books.

27/1/26, 3:38 pm3 reposts34 likes

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