Anthropic Destroys Rare And Valuable Books To Feed The Machine - The Latest AI Controversy Explained

Published Jul 30, 2026, 11:45 PM EDT Dani Kessel Odom (they/them) is an autistic lead writer and TV critic who covers sci-fi shows like Doctor Who and Pluribus, fantasy shows like The Magicians and Percy Jackson, and horror of all kinds. They also cover Marvel and DC TV shows and movies, with a robust knowledge of comic books. Their TV reviews can be found on Rotten Tomatoes. Dani is also part of ScreenRant's books team, using their fiction writing and literature studies as the backbone for their book analyses. They have covered events, such as the Denver Fan Expo. Professionals in the field, such as Damien Leone and Lucy Hale, have shared their articles. Their review of Ponies was quoted in the show's TV trailer. In university, they majored in English Writing with a minor in psychology. They have always had a passion for analyzing TV and movies, even taking filmography and scriptwriting classes in university. They also studied and participated in onstage and onscreen acting extensively from the ages of 7 to 18. Aside from working at Screen Rant, Dani has worked as a freelance editor and writer over the past decade, often in a ghostwriting capacity. AI has sparked many controversies in the book world, but Anthropic’s destruction of rare and valuable books ranks among the most despicable acts AI companies have ever committed. Generative AI is wrecking our world, physically and intellectually. If the effect on the environment isn’t enough, AI is stealing from hardworking writers and artists. Then, companies and users are using that stolen material to take away writing, editing, and artistic jobs. On top of that, false AI accusations are ruining the reputations of hardworking writers. Those of us in the profession are constantly having to stay updated on the latest punctuation and buzzwords used by AI just to avoid the appearance of using these tools. Most of the job listings under the "writer" and "editor" labels on job sites are looking for people to train AI. However, these issues truly pale in comparison to the most recent AI scandal. One of the most horrible things yet to come out of the new wave of AI is Project Panama, a disturbing initiative at the hands of Anthropic that is actively destroying rare books and manuscripts to train the AI machine, Claude. Folks refused to go down without a fight, taking the AI company to court. This is everything you need to know about the Anthropic scandal and the status of the legal case against the company. What Is Project Panama & Why Is It Targeting Old Books? Project Panama was started by Anthropic in 2024, and unsealed court documents on Court Listener from the legal case Bartz v. Anthropic PBC reveal a disturbing end goal. The document states: “Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world. We use a ‘soft codename’ for it because we don’t want it to be known that we are working on this. This document is visible to all Anthropic employees, but you should avoid talking about it in public areas, and the fact that we are working on this should not be shared with anyone outside Anthropic.” Their process is very simple. They are quite literally buying books in bulk, including rare and out-of-print books. They are putting them into hydraulic machines that slice the spine open, scan them, and then pulp them. As disturbing as this process is, it makes sense if I think of it through the perspective of an, in my own personal perspective, corrupt AI company that doesn’t care about important literature. AI is all over the web. Chatbots cannot use AI-produced materials to train AI because that degrades the system and eventually collapses. This was shown in a previous study by Nature, and a study published in Physical Review Letters confirmed that the way to prevent this collapse is to feed the machine even a single human-produced data point. Old books are the ideal selection for training AI because they were written before AI even existed, so there’s no question about them being 100% created by humans. While I can imagine their perspective, I have absolute disdain for this. The Court Case Against Anthropic & Its Dangerous Precedent The main court case related to Project Panema was Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, where the quote about the goal came from. According to The Authors Guild, authors Charles Graeber, Kirk Wallace Johnson, and Andrea Bartz filed a lawsuit against Anthropic for using their books to train large language models (LLMs) without permission. This case resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement to be split among the rights holders for about 500,000 out of the 7 million books downloaded from book piracy websites like Libgen and PiLiMil, which seem to keep coming back no matter how many times they shut down. This is just one of the many cases going up against AI firms in the US, and it seems like a win, right? It depends on who you ask, I suppose. I think it’s about 10% a win, and 90% a loss. For the authors who got the settlement, this is a small victory that reaffirms piracy as theft. However, the case set an extremely dangerous legal precedent. Because of Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, it’s now established that, as long as the book is purchased legally and destroyed afterward, it’s entirely legal to make a digital copy, as it’s deemed a one-for-one trade. It’s considered “transformative,” protecting the action with fair use. What’s more, AI companies can do whatever they want with those digital copies because they own them. Authors don't get a say in whether their books are used to train the AI that is trying to essentially take their jobs, which means that their legal efforts and open letters against AI mean virtually nothing. The precedent set by the court case explains the spike in purchases from rare book dealers, which The Telegraph reported on. Hundreds of sellers are being approached by companies purchasing second-hand books with bulk orders of extremely rare books, some of which have almost no surviving copies. Unfortunately, the company ISBNdb is catering to the AI companies, offering to sell them up to a million books at a time, including the last copies. This is the terrifying world that we live in. Booksellers are willing to work with AI companies that want to destroy books altogether. Sadly, it’s horrifying for companies like Anthropic to do this, but it’s now technically legal. Unless another legal case goes higher up the chain and contradicts the result of Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, the AI company is free to continue its actions.