Anthropic's Project Panama drives mass purchase of German books for AI training

US‑based AI company Anthropic is behind the “Project Panama,” ordering hundreds of out‑of‑print German books from antiquarians. Orders arrive nightly, each for a single copy, and are paid promptly, yielding some sellers tens of thousands of euros in weeks. The books—ranging from cookbooks and biographies to travel guides—have their spines cut, are scanned at high speed, and the digitised texts are fed to Anthropic’s language models; the physical pages are discarded. The Washington Post first reported the project. Anthropic previously settled a lawsuit alleging illegal mass downloading of books for $1.5 billion; under US “fair use” the current purchases are legal, though authors and antiquarian groups criticize the lack of consultation.

Critics warn the practice could undermine authors’ rights and the preservation of German cultural heritage, while Anthropic argues the digitisation supports AI development. The scale of the operation highlights growing demand for printed material to train large language models.