Anthropic's 'Project Panama' exposed: millions of rare books sliced, scanned, and destroyed for AI training data

Published Aug 7, 01:06 AM UTC

AI companies are destroying millions of rare and second-hand books to feed their insatiable demand for training data, raising serious concerns for the publishing industry and copyright law. Antiquarian booksellers in the UK and Europe received suspicious orders for thousands of obscure titles from anonymous buyers. Court documents reveal that Anthropic, developer of the Claude AI model, launched 'Project Panama' to acquire millions of books, slice off their spines with industrial cutting machines, scan every page, and recycle the rest. Internal documents show executives wanted to keep the program secret. Similar orders have been linked to Canadian company Zoom Books, which denies involvement. Copyright violations are difficult to prove due to legal loopholes and varying international laws. Publishers and authors are calling for stronger regulation from national governments and the EU to prevent unauthorized use of copyrighted works in AI training.