Training on books The big story this week is a pair of US copyright rulings over AI training data, which both held that training LLMs on books per se is not a breach of US copyright but covered by 'fair use', since the material in the books is not being redistributed. There is some nuance: the first case was against Anthropic, which has both downloaded a repository of pirated books (mostly just for speed and convenience) and then bought and scanned millions of books itself, and Meta has also downloaded the same repository. The piracy is a separate issue, but actually buying a book and then uploading it into a system that learns from it but does not hand out copies does not (also far) appear to breach US law. Other countries have other laws, of course, and can change them. ANTHROPIC SUMMARY, META SUMMARY, META, ANTHROPIC The week in AI Google launched CLI, its answer to the AI coding boom. LINK Meta is rich, but not as rich as the field it's running with for AI capex: having raised its 2025 capex guidance to '$64-$72bn', it's now talking to private equity to raise $29bn. LINK Buzzy / inflammatory startup of the week - Cluely explicitly pitches itself as the AI app for 'cheating' - it runs on your computer in the background, watching and making suggestions, including to your Zoom calls (without being visible to the people you're speaking to, which could technically be illegal in a bunch of places). It just raised from a16z. LINK OpenAI/Microsoft breakups Microsoft saw OpenAI early and did a partnership deal… but what does it get back, beyond more Azure sales? OpenAI wants compute, cash and distribution from Microsoft and doesn't want to give anything. It's building its own productivity software, second-sourcing from Google for infrastructure and working on a $500bn infra plan ('Stargate') of its own, while withholding technical information from Microsoft. And Microsoft has been building its own models, but so far can't get into the top 100 in the leader boards and can't get its AI ASIC to work. And it seems pretty clear that Sam Altman wants OpenAI to be the next Google, not a tech provider to Microsoft. That means a lot of pain and a lot of leaks. Meanwhile, the terms of the deal hinge on whether OpenAI can achieve AGI, but AGI is a thought experiment, not a specific technology you can define in court, and 'ASI' is close to meaningless - so it looks like Sam Altman plans to declare AGI, or ASI, and try to walk away from the deal, or use it for leverage, or… something. I hope Jony Ive is paying attention. RIVALRY, OFFICE, AGI & ASI, CHIPS China eats cars I'm old enough to remember when Xiaomi was just another Android OEM (albeit a cool one), but now it has a SUV crossover aimed at the Tesla Model Y. LINK Adult content age checks The UK will require age verification from adult content sites (the range of permitted verification services is interesting) and the US Supreme Court decided that legal requirements for such checks are constitutional. Meanwhile, Apple will offer an age check API in this years' OS releases. OFCOM, SUPREME COURT, APPLE | 
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