AI Companies Are Shredding Rare Books, Reports Indicate

Internal documents revealed in a January copyright lawsuit disclose that Anthropic secretly initiated 'Project Panama' in 2024, spending tens of millions of dollars to physically shred and scan millions of books to train AI models like Claude. Additionally, European booksellers, including Pieter de Vries, have reported receiving suspicious solicitations from Singapore-based firm 2077AI seeking to purchase large volumes of books. These developments suggest a systematic effort by AI companies to acquire and destroy physical copies of works to utilize their content for model training.

New reports reveal Anthropic's secret 'Project Panama,' an initiative that spent tens of millions of dollars to acquire and physically destroy millions of books for AI training, a practice recently deemed transformative fair use by a San Francisco federal judge in the Bartz v. Anthropic lawsuit. While court documents confirm this methodology was used to train Claude, a separate ruling has ordered the company to pay $1.5 billion to authors for using pirated content. Meanwhile, independent booksellers report a surge in bulk demand from intermediaries working for AI firms, prompting critics and figures like Elon Musk to advocate for preserving physical texts instead of destroying them to feed data models.

Internal documents from a lawsuit revealed Anthropic's previously secret 'Project Panama,' an industrial-scale operation that utilized tens of millions of dollars to acquire and destroy millions of books for AI training. While a San Francisco federal judge ruled that such physical destruction of legally purchased books constitutes 'transformative fair use' in the Bartz v. Anthropic case, the company was separately ordered to pay a $1.5 billion settlement to authors for the use of pirated copies. Meanwhile, brokers are anonymously sourcing books for AI firms at an industrial scale, causing weekly sales for some sellers to surge from twenty to several hundred copies.

Internal documents revealed in a copyright lawsuit indicate that Anthropic launched a secret operation called 'Project Panama' in 2024 to physically shred and scan books for training models like Claude, a process involving the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars. While a US federal judge ruled in the Bartz v. Anthropic PBC case that such scanning constitutes transformative fair use, a separate settlement has required Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion, providing approximately $3,000 per book to thousands of authors for using pirated copies. Additionally, reports suggest AI companies are using anonymous intermediaries to acquire massive quantities of non-fiction works from second-hand books

Internal documents revealed in a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic expose 'Project Panama,' a secret 2024 initiative where the company spent tens of millions of dollars to purchase millions of books, slice their spines with hydraulic machines, and scan them for AI training. While a San Francisco federal judge ruled in the Bartz v. Anthropic PBC case that such scanning constitutes transformative fair use, a separate settlement in the same district requires Anthropic to pay approximately $3,000 per book to thousands of authors for using pirated copies. Additionally, reports indicate AI firms are using intermediaries and bulk sourcing companies to anonymously acquire huge volumes of titles, a

A copyright lawsuit against Anthropic has revealed 'Project Panama,' a secret initiative where the company allegedly spent tens of millions of dollars to purchase, physically shred, and scan millions of books to train models like Claude using hydraulic cutting machines. While a San Francisco federal judge ruled in the Bartz v. Anthropic PBC case that such scanning constitutes transformative fair use, a separate settlement in the same district requires Anthropic to pay approximately $3,000 per book to thousands of authors for using pirated copies. Additionally, reports indicate AI firms are using intermediaries and bulk sourcing companies like ISBNdb to anonymously acquire massive quantities,

New evidence from the Bartz v. Anthropic PBC copyright lawsuit reveals that Anthropic initiated 'Project Panama' in 2024, a secret operation using industrial cutters and high-speed scanners to digitize millions of purchased books for training Claude. While a San Francisco federal judge ruled this practice constitutes transformative fair use, a separate settlement in the same district requires the company to pay thousands of authors roughly $3,000 per book for the use of pirated materials. Furthermore, reports indicate that AI companies across Europe and the US are increasingly using intermediaries like ISBNdb to anonymously acquire books at scale, framing the destruction of these physical volumes as digital preservation.

Anthropic’s 'Project Panama' has been revealed through court documents, exposing a secret initiative to physically shred and scan millions of books using hydraulic cutting machines for AI training. While a San Francisco federal judge ruled that scanning purchased books for digital copies constitutes transformative fair use, Anthropic has also faced a $1.5 billion copyright settlement requiring the company to pay thousands of authors approximately $3,000 per book for using pirated copies to train Claude.

Internal documents from a copyright lawsuit revealed that Anthropic operates a secret initiative called 'Project Panama,' involving the use of hydraulic cutting machines to shred book spines for high-speed scanning to train Claude. While a US federal judge ruled that such scanning constitutes transformative fair use, Anthropic was also ordered in a separate settlement to pay $1.5 billion to authors for using pirated copies. Additionally, companies like ISBNdb have faced scrutiny for marketing bulk book sourcing to AI clients, though they claim their controversial landing page was merely a market test and has since been removed.

Internal documents from a copyright lawsuit revealed that Anthropic secretly operated 'Project Panama,' using hydraulic machines to shred and scan millions of books for training models like Claude. While a San Francisco judge ruled such scanning as transformative fair use, Anthropic was also ordered in a separate case to pay a $1.5 billion settlement for using pirated copies. Additionally, book-sourcing firm ISBNdb has since removed its controversial marketing landing page, stating that its service for AI companies was merely a market interest test.

Internal documents revealed in a copyright lawsuit suggest Anthropic operated a secret initiative called 'Project Panama,' involving the use of hydraulic cutting machines to shred and scan millions of books for training models like Claude. While US federal judges have ruled such scanning constitutes transformative fair use, Anthropic has denied purchasing books from the recycler Zoom Books, despite the Canadian company's aggressive expansion and refusal to disclose if its intact book sales serve AI-driven destructive scanning. Additionally, a separate US federal court approved a $1.5 billion settlement requiring Anthropic to pay authors approximately $3,000 per book for the unauthorized use'