A federal judge has sided with Anthropic in an AI copyright case, ruling that training — and only training — its AI models on legally purchased books without authors’ permission is fair use. It’s a first-of-its-kind ruling in favor of the AI industry, but it’s importantly limited specifically to physical books Anthropic purchased and digitized. The decision also does not address whether the outputs of an AI model infringe copyrights, which is at issue in other related cases. It’s a pivotal decision that could affect how judges respond to AI copyright cases going forward. Judge Alsup says the court will hold a separate trial on the pirated content used by Anthropic, which will determine the resulting damages.