Project Panama: How Anthropic shredded books to train its AI chatbot

EuroNews · 🇫🇷 public France · Aug 05, 2026 · 868 words · By Craig Saueurs

Devaluation of Human Creativity Copyright Infringement AI Ethics and Corporate Secrecy

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What to know about Devaluation of Human Creativity

Recently unsealed court documents reveal how Anthropic secretly bought, destroyed and scanned books to train its AI chatbot, Claude.

Claims checked 13

Techniques found 3

Topics 3

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage

Left0%

Center100%

Right0%

2 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

Recently unsealed court documents reveal how Anthropic secretly bought, destroyed and scanned books to train its AI chatbot, Claude.

Why it matters

It sounds like a Ray Bradbury story come to life.

Common ground

Somewhere in America’s sprawl of warehouses, book spines were sliced by machines like cuts of salami.

Perspective signals

The tension in the story is sharpened by Loaded Language, Name Calling / Labeling, Exaggeration / Hyperbole: language that can make the dispute feel more urgent, personal, or adversarial than the underlying facts alone.

Follow-up questions

What new context would change how readers understand this Devaluation of Human Creativity story?
What evidence would most clearly confirm or weaken the claim that The following year, Mann shared a link to the Pirate Library Mirror – a full catalogue of illegally acquired books – with other Anthropic employees?
How does this story connect Devaluation of Human Creativity with Copyright Infringement over the next few days?

open_in_new Read the original article: https://www.euronews.com/culture/2026/08/05/project-panama-how-anthropic-secretl…

psychologyPropaganda Techniques Detected

eFinder identified 3 propaganda techniques in this article. These signals explain how wording, emphasis, or missing context can shape a reader's interpretation.

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Loaded Language 90% confidence

Using words with strong emotional connotations to influence an audience.

Found in this article: eFinder flagged this technique because the story's framing or source language may guide readers toward a particular interpretation. Review the claim checks and evidence below to separate what is directly supported from what is implied by wording or emphasis.

Why it matters: Recognizing loaded language helps readers compare the article's framing with the underlying facts and with coverage from other sources.

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Name Calling / Labeling 70% confidence

Attaching a negative label to a person or group to reject them without evidence.

Why it matters: Recognizing name calling / labeling helps readers compare the article's framing with the underlying facts and with coverage from other sources.

warning

Exaggeration / Hyperbole 80% confidence

Overstating facts or claims to create a stronger emotional response.

Why it matters: Recognizing exaggeration / hyperbole helps readers compare the article's framing with the underlying facts and with coverage from other sources.

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 13 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

check_circle Corroborated 7

schedule Pending 3

help Insufficient Evidence 2

verified Verified By Reference 1

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Claim 1: “The following year, Mann shared a link to the Pirate Library Mirror – a full catalogue of illegally acquired books – with other Anthropic employees.”

CORROBORATED

Multiple sources confirm Ben Mann shared a link to the Pirate Library Mirror with employees in 2022, including the quote 'just in time!!!'.

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web search NEUTRAL — Mann sent a link to the site to other Anthropic employees with the message: “just in time!!!” In legal filings, Anthropic argued that it did not train a commercial AI model for profit using LibGen dat…
https://harici.com.tr/en/project-panama-inside-anthropics-se…

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web search NEUTRAL — The following year, Mann shared a link to the Pirate Library Mirror – a full catalogue of illegally acquired books – with other Anthropic employees. "just in time!!!" he wrote. The legal reckoning.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/project-panama-anthro…

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web search NEUTRAL — It begins in 2021, when Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann downloaded millions of books from Library Genesis, known as LibGen, one of the largest pirate repositories of digitized books in the world. He sen…
https://blog.stackademic.com/anthropic-bought-millions-of-bo…

schedule

Claim 2: “Meta, OpenAI, Google and Microsoft are also facing copyright lawsuits from authors making similar allegations of piracy.”

PENDING

This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.

schedule

Claim 3: “In the original ruling last year, a judge found that the company’s use of lawfully purchased books was protected as fair use under US law.”

PENDING

This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.

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Claim 4: “unsealed court documents reveal how Anthropic secretly bought, destroyed and scanned books to train its AI chatbot, Claude.”

CORROBORATED

Multiple independent sources (Ars Technica, web search results) confirm that unsealed court documents reveal Anthropic bought, scanned, and destroyed books to train Claude.

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Anthropic, PBC is an American artificial intelligence (AI) public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California, founded with the goal of promoting AI safety. Its flagship product is …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Since January 2026, the United States Department of Defense has conflicted with the artificial intelligence company Anthropic over the use of its products for military purposes and mass domestic surve…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic–United_States_Depart…

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Claude is a series of large language models developed by American software company Anthropic. Claude was released as an AI-based chatbot in March 2023. It is also used in AI-assisted software developm…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_(AI)

+ 3 more evidence sources

verified

Claim 5: “Project Panama began in early 2024”

VERIFIED BY REFERENCE

The Wikipedia entry for 'Project Panama' and other web search results confirm the operation began in early 2024.

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Panama Canal (Spanish: Canal de Panamá) is an artificial 82-kilometer (51-mile) waterway in Panama that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. It cuts across the narrowest point of the…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Panama Canal expansion project (Spanish: ampliación del Canal de Panamá), also called the Third Set of Locks Project, doubled the capacity of the Panama Canal by adding a new traffic lane, enablin…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_expansion_project

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Project Panama is a data harvesting, digital piracy and destructive book scanning operation, by American artificial intelligence corporation Anthropic, aimed at developing a dataset of published old a…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Panama

+ 3 more evidence sources

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Claim 6: “The revelation of Anthropic’s shadowy efforts – first reported by the Washington Post”

CORROBORATED

Novara Media explicitly states that the Washington Post reported on Anthropic acquiring millions of books for training.

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+ 3 more evidence sources

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Claim 7: ““The court’s landmark June 2025 ruling remains intact,” Anthropic deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said”

PENDING

This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.

help

Claim 8: “Anthropic – currently valued at US$965 billion (€875 billion) – agreed to pay $1.5 billion (about €1.3 billion) to settle the case, covering about 500,000 eligible works.”

INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

No evidence was found in the provided search results to confirm a $1.5 billion settlement or a valuation of $965 billion.

help

Claim 9: “In 2024, a group of authors, led by novelist Andrea Bartz and nonfiction writers Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, hit Anthropic with a class action lawsuit”

INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

No evidence was found in the provided search results regarding a class action lawsuit led specifically by Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, although other sources mention a 'Bartz v. Anthropic' case.

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Claim 10: “Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann acquired a trove of copyright-protected content from a “shadow library” called LibGen in June 2021.”

CORROBORATED

Multiple sources, including RuntimeWire and other reports, confirm Ben Mann downloaded millions of books from LibGen in June 2021.

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web search NEUTRAL — Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann downloaded the entire Books3 dataset (196,640 pirated books) in early 2021. Then they grabbed 5 million more from LibGen in June 2021, and another 2 million from PiLiMi i…
https://huggingface.co/blog/fdaudens/anthropic-ai-training-f…

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web search NEUTRAL — Back in 2021, Anthropic cofounder Ben Mann allegedly downloaded up to seven million copies of books across the two shadow libraries: In June 2021, Mann downloaded in this way at least five million cop…
https://www.ignorance.ai/p/anthropic-might-legally-owe-me-th…

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web search NEUTRAL — The acquisition campaign began early in Anthropic's history. A June 23rd, 2025 court order found that co-founder Ben Mann (@8enmann) downloaded at least 5 million books from LibGen in June 2021.
https://runtimewire.com/article/anthropic-settles-book-pirac…

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Claim 11: “The startup purchased tens of thousands of books at a time from multiple vendors, including Better World Books and UK-based World of Books.”

CORROBORATED

Multiple sources confirm the purchase of tens of thousands of books from vendors including Better World Books and World of Books.

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Library Genesis (shortened to LibGen) is a shadow library project for file-sharing access to scholarly journal articles, academic and general-interest books, images, comics, audiobooks, and magazines.…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis

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+ 3 more evidence sources

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Claim 12: “Project Panama was Anthropic’s secret plan “to destructively scan all the books in the world,” an internal planning document unsealed in legal filings revealed in late July.”

CORROBORATED

Multiple sources describe 'Project Panama' as an internal plan to destructively scan books to train AI models.

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web search NEUTRAL — Inside Project Panama: 2 million books sliced, scanned and destroyed by Anthropic AI to train models. Is this the price of intelligence? We often talk about the "black box" of AI, but we rarely discus…
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/worldtechnologycongress_anthr…

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web search NEUTRAL — The books still circulate. The knowledge was not merely copied into some private vault; it was made permanently available to the public as a shared inheritance. Now look at Anthropic. In early 2024 th…
https://digg.com/tech/2ojs385v

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web search NEUTRAL — Project Panama began in early 2024, as Anthropic executives sought books predating those available online that could teach its AI chatbot Claude “how to write well” instead of mimicking “low quality i…
https://www.euronews.com/culture/2026/08/05/project-panama-h…

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Claim 13: “According to a vendor that ultimately worked with Anthropic, the company was “seeking an experienced document scanning services vendor to convert from 500,000 to two million books over a six-month period.””

CORROBORATED

Mashable and other court-document-based reports confirm Anthropic sought a vendor to convert 500,000 to 2 million books over six months.

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — In cosmology and philosophy of science, the anthropic principle (also known as the observation selection effect) is the proposition that the range of possible observations made about a universe is lim…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

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+ 3 more evidence sources

info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.