Anthropic 'Project Panama' Secret Book Scanning Initiative
Unsealed court documents reveal that Anthropic engaged in a large-scale project to acquire, scan, and destroy millions of physical books to train its Claude AI models. While a judge ruled the destructive scanning of legally purchased books qualified as fair use, the company reached a $1.5 billion settlement over previous uses of pirated digital libraries.
Aggregated from 7 sources · Updated 31 Jul 2026, 03:14 UTC (UTC)
Coverage Balance
7 sourcesFacts (10)
- Established
Anthropic initiated a clandestine effort nicknamed 'Project Panama' in early 2024 to scan millions of books.
- Established
The project involved purchasing used books, removing their bindings with hydraulic cutting machines, and scanning the pages on high-speed equipment.
- Established
Anthropic discarded or recycled the physical books after they were converted into digital files for their internal research library.
- Established
Anthropic hired former Google executive Tom Turvey, who previously worked on the Google Books project, to lead the scanning initiative.
- Established
Internal documents stated the company wished to keep the project secret to avoid public perception of 'destroying the arts'.
- Established
Co-founder Ben Mann downloaded at least 7 million books from pirated 'shadow libraries' including LibGen and Pirate Library Mirror between 2021 and 2022.
- Established
U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that the destructive scanning of legally purchased books for AI training is 'transformative' and falls under 'fair use'.
- Established
Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement in August 2025 to resolve copyright claims related to the use of pirated materials.
- Established
Anthropic leadership viewed book data as essential for teaching AI models to write high-quality prose rather than mimicking low-quality internet slang.
- AttributionNiche Signal
Internal records show CEO Dario Amodei suggested acquiring books through these methods to avoid 'legal/practice/business slog'.