Anthropic faces scrutiny over ‘Project Panama’ book destruction

A coalition of American civil rights groups has called for a federal investigation into AI companies following revelations regarding the mass acquisition and destruction of physical books. Internal documents from Anthropic, the creator of the AI assistant Claude, detail an initiative known as ‘Project Panama’.

According to the documents, the project involves the mass purchase of used and rare books, which are then subjected to ‘destructive scanning’. This process involves cutting and scanning pages before the physical originals are discarded. The goal is to acquire high-quality, non-digitized human language to train large language models and avoid ‘model collapse’, a phenomenon where AI begins to learn from machine-generated content rather than authentic human expression.

While courts have previously ruled that training AI on legally purchased books constitutes fair use—even if the physical copies are destroyed—the coalition expressed concern that these practices allow tech giants to become the exclusive holders of humanity’s written works. The group has urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate the impact of these practices on the public good and historical preservation.