Reminds me when Facebook said to EU that they did not have the technology to merge FB and Whatsapp accounts when they bought Whatapp.

That's not really the point, though, is it? Now Anthropic can afford to buy books and get them scanned. They likely didn't have the money or time to do that before.

And even if they didn't use the illegally-obtained work to train any of the models they released, of course they used them to train unreleased prototypes and to make progress at improving their models and training methods.

By engaging in illegal activity, they advanced their business faster and more cheaply than they otherwise would have been able to. With this settlement, other new AI companies will see it on the record that they could face penalties if they do this, and will have to go the slower, more expensive route -- if they can even afford to do so.

It might not make it impossible, but it makes the moat around the current incumbents just that much wider.

> As part of the settlement, Anthropic said that it did not use any pirated works to build A.I. technologies that were publicly released.

Oh so now we're at "just trust me bro" levels of absurdity