Starcast Join the waitlist
The Vergecast

The Vergecast

Millions of books died so Claude could live

Feb 3, 2026 · 1h 29m

Coming soon to iPhone. Already have it? “Listen in Starcast” takes you straight there.

On this episode

About this episode

AI companies want all the data, everywhere, to make their models bigger and better. That means a lot of questions about piracy and copyright, and at least in one case it means Anthropic systematically destroying countless books just to feed them to the model. The Washington Post's Will Oremus joins the show to explain how that worked, why Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI and others are doing it, and what the law has to say. Then, Puck's Julia Alexander helps David figure out whether Netflix is serious about showing movies in theaters, and what theaters need to do to survive in the entertainment business going forward. Further reading: From The Washington Post: Anthropic ‘destructively’ scanned…