The world is a funny old place. A judge in San Francisco has ruled that Anthropic’s use of a bunch of books without permission to train its AI system was legal under US copyright law.
This is a big win. The company was deemed to have made ‘fair use’ of the books to train its Claude large language model.
The case involved specific books by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson.
But this was not a case of Anthropic borrowing a few titles from the neighbours bookshelf to read with Claude in front of a roaring winter’s fire.
Anthropic had instead copied and stored more than seven million pirated books in a central library. This was ruled to have breached the authors’ copyright and was not fair use.
In a less funny old world, this might even be called theft.
The judge in the case said Anthropic’s Claude LLM was “like any reader aspiring to be a writer”. It read the books not to copy them or replace them, but to create something completely new.
Most aspiring writers don’t chew through seven million books on their way to becoming Joseph Heller, but Claude is an over-achiever.
It is a hugely consequential decision, for Anthropic – which is backed by Google and Amazon – and for the treatment of AI more broadly.
Copy, storing and letting Claude snuggle in and read the seven million-title library is a different matter, and the judge has ruled that Anthropic will have to face a trial that will determine how much the company owes.
Two state budgets
There were state budgets delivered in NSW and Queensland this week, and both featured big new initiatives targeting tech and innovation.
Most interesting was the creation of a new Investment Delivery Authority in NSW to help expedite approvals for investment projects worth more than $1 billion.
While this initiative has distinctly property market and renewable energy feels, it has been hailed by data companies as critical to speeding up the approvals processes for building new digital infrastructure to power AI services.
Also in the NSW budget was new money for Tech Central (including an extraordinary $5 million to relocate the Sydney Startup), and $20 million for an Emerging Industries Commercialisation Fund.
NSW Opposition leader Mark Speakman’s Budget reply on Thursday put a focus on artificial intelligence as one of five core pillars for the state.
The Queensland Budget also dropped this week with $1.2 billion in support for government digital services and the development of sovereign industry development.
The Australian Computer Society chief executive Josh Griggs says Australia needs to invest $2 billion to $4 billion on building sovereign AI infrastructure – just to “keep a foot in the door” of sovereign capability development in artificial intelligence.
Other stories to watch this week include a great conversation with PEXA chief technology officer Eglantine Etiemble on the company’s e-conveyancing platform, which she says has developed into a key national asset.
The eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant was also at the National Press Club, and two a Australia’s brightest quantum prospects Diraq and Emergence Quantum announced they had passed a significant milestone.
Finally, the entries for the 2025 InnovationAus Awards for Excellence will close at midnight on Wednesday July 2. If you are a startup entrepreneur or a deep tech researcher, you can use this high profile awards program to put a spotlight on your company’s hard work.
- Anthropic wins key US ruling on AI in authors’ copyright lawsuit
- NSW Budget: $80m in startup support, data centre reform
- NSW pulls innovation lever in ‘pro-growth’ Budget
- Tech lobby group urges EU leaders to pause AI Act
- ARC awards $46.6m across 75 Linkage Projects
- Last chance: InnovationAus Awards entries close July 2
- Sovereign AI infrastructure needs $2b to $4b in investment
- Diraq and Emergence team up for major quantum milestone
- PEXA’s CTO on trust, collaboration and sovereign digital infrastructure
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