A set of unredacted and less-redacted documents from the Anthropic case have been released, revealing more details on the tech company’s secret plan to copy every book in existence to teach their AI tool “how to write well.” “Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world,” Anthropic said in the filings, as reported by the Washington Post. “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.” In Project Panama, Anthropic estimated that there are approximately 130 million unique books in the world, including 40 million that are able to be […]
AI
Publishers Move to Join Copyright Suit Against Google
Hachette Book Group and Cengage have moved to intervene in a class action lawsuit first brought by writers and illustrators against Google in 2023, accusing the company of copyright infringement in using their books to train its AI system Gemini. They will represent the interests of publishers, a class of rightsholders who are not currently represented in the suit. The Association of American Publishers writes, “The publishers have moved to intervene now given recent efforts by the individual plaintiffs to certify a class that includes publishers as copyright owners of many works in suit, and Google’s objection to that effort […]
Libby Clarifies AI Policy, Faces Backlash For Including AI-Created Titles
Library reading app Libby is facing a backlash online over one element of its extensive AI policies, after clarifying on Bluesky on Monday that they do not exclude AI-generated content from their catalog. They wrote in a thread, “Libby’s role is to support choice by ensuring options are available and empowering libraries to serve their patrons. We don’t exclude titles created with AI tools from the catalog, we ask that publishers self-identify AI content.” The thread continues: “We recognize the environmental footprint of AI systems and we strive to minimize it through evaluation of our systems for sustainability.” OverDrive’s full […]
Harlequin France Shifts to AI Translation
Harlequin France has begun to use AI translation in an effort to “increase profitability by reducing working time,” according to French translators association ATLF. In a letter to members, ATLF and the collective In the Flesh state that the publisher has contacted several translators to say that they will end their work with them after their current contract. Instead, the company Fluent Planet will translate books using AI and hire freelance editors to proof the translations afterward. According to Livres Hebdo, translators for Harlequin France’s Azur line of short romances were told in November that the books would begin machine […]
Meet the New Judge in the Anthropic Case
With the retirement of Judge William Alsup, Northern California District Court Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin will oversee the Anthropic copyright settlement from here. Appointed to the bench in 2023 by President Joe Biden, she is considered “one of the nation’s leading immigration attorneys, having spent her entire career advocating for rights of immigrant workers.” In paperwork filed December 30 as ordered by Judge Alsup, the plaintiffs’ attorneys admitted that they had agreed to the split of legal fees proposed to the court in an early December filing way back on August 7 in a written agreement. No doubt Judge Alsup would […]
Amazon Has Constrained “Ask This Book,” Though Authors Guild Believes It’s An Infringing Derivative Use
The Authors Guild has been communicating concerns to Amazon that its “Ask this Book” in-book chatbot infringes authors’ reserved rights: “The Guild is concerned that Ask this Book turns books into searchable, interactive products akin to enhanced ebooks or annotated editions—a new format for which rights should be specifically negotiated—and, given Amazon’s stronghold on ebook retail, it could usurp the burgeoning licensing market for interactive AI-enabled ebooks and audiobooks.” Amazon’s view is that the feature is “a natural language expansion of the search functionality that already exists in Kindle apps and for which no license is required.” Though it’s not […]