A U.S. federal court has certified a class action lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging the unauthorized use of millions of copyrighted books to train its Claude AI models.
The case, dubbed a “Napster-style” piracy lawsuit, could lead to billion-dollar damages and potentially reshape how AI companies approach data sourcing, intellectual property, and fair use. As regulators, authors, and content creators closely watch the proceedings, the outcome may establish legal precedent on whether scraping copyrighted content for model training is lawful.
The lawsuit threatens to slow AI development momentum and push companies toward more transparent and licensed data usage strategies.
