Anthropic is publicly objecting to other AI companies using Claude's outputs to train their models—despite Claude itself being trained on vast amounts of copyrighted material without permission. The hypocrisy isn't lost on observers: AI companies want their outputs protected while claiming fair use for their inputs.

The AI industry wants to have it both ways—scraping the entire internet to train models while demanding protection for their own outputs. Anthropic calling out competitors for the same behavior is peak tech doublethink.

What Anthropic Is Claiming

According to Yahoo reporting, Anthropic has been vocal about competitors using Claude's responses to improve their own models—a practice called "distillation" or "model-to-model training."

The argument goes like this: Claude's outputs are proprietary intellectual property. Using them to train competing models is theft. Anthropic invested billions in research, compute, and safety work. Competitors shouldn't get to free-ride on that investment.

It's a reasonable position—until you remember how Anthropic trained Claude in the first place.

The Inconvenient Truth

Claude, like every other large language model, was trained on:

• Books scraped from piracy sites and digital libraries • News articles taken without compensation or permission • Code repositories with various open source licenses • Social media posts from millions of users who never consented • Academic papers behind paywalls • Copyrighted content across the entire internet

Anthroponic's position has consistently been that this is fair use—that training AI models on copyrighted material is transformative and doesn't constitute infringement.

So when Anthropic complains that other companies are training on their outputs, the irony is palpable.

The AI Industry's Double Standard

This isn't unique to Anthropic. The entire AI industry operates on a massive double standard:

For inputs: "Copyright is outdated. Training on data is transformative fair use. Information wants to be free."

For outputs: "Our model responses are proprietary. Using them without permission is theft. Respect our IP."

Pick a lane.

Either training on data without permission is fair use—in which case competitors training on your outputs is also fair use—or it's infringement, in which case you're also infringing on the original creators whose work you scraped.

You don't get to claim fair use protections for your inputs while demanding copyright enforcement for your outputs.

Why This Matters

The stakes are real. If competitors can legally train on Claude's outputs, it undermines Anthropic's competitive moat. Smaller companies could use Claude to bootstrap their own models, effectively using Anthropic's compute and research as a shortcut.

But that's exactly what Anthropic did to authors, journalists, and programmers whose work was used to train Claude.

The difference is that Anthropic has lawyers, lobbyists, and billions in funding. Individual creators whose work was scraped don't have those resources.

The Legal Uncertainty

Here's the reality: nobody knows how this plays out legally. There are multiple lawsuits pending about whether training on copyrighted data constitutes fair use. Courts haven't settled the question.

If training on copyrighted material is fair use, then Anthropic has no grounds to complain about competitors training on Claude's outputs.

If it's not fair use, then Anthropic—and every other AI company—is sitting on a massive liability from their original training data.

Either way, Anthropic's position is incoherent.

The Tech Industry Pattern

This is a familiar tech industry move:

1. Disrupt existing industries by ignoring established rules 2. Claim you're too innovative for old regulations 3. Build massive market position before anyone can react 4. Once established, demand protection from the next disruptor

We saw it with Uber versus taxis. We saw it with Airbnb versus hotels. Now we're seeing it with AI companies versus... each other.

The hypocrisy is consistent.

My Take

I've built companies. I understand wanting to protect your competitive advantages. But Anthropic's complaint rings hollow when they built their entire business on other people's uncompensated work.

If Anthropic wants legal protection for their outputs, they should support fair compensation for the creators whose inputs made Claude possible.

Otherwise, this is just rent-seeking: using legal threats to protect market position after benefiting from the same practices they're now condemning.

The technology is impressive. The double standards are not.