A U.S. federal judge in San Francisco has granted final approval to Anthropic’s landmark $1.5 billion settlement in a class-action copyright lawsuit brought by a group of authors who accused the artificial intelligence company of using their books without permission to train its AI chatbot, Claude. The agreement is considered the largest known settlement in a U.S. copyright case and marks the first major AI training copyright dispute to be resolved through settlement.
The lawsuit, filed in 2024, alleged that Anthropic relied on pirated copies of millions of books to develop its large language model. While a previous court ruling found that using copyrighted books for AI training qualified as fair use, it also determined that Anthropic violated copyright law by maintaining a vast library of more than seven million pirated books that were not necessarily used for training. A trial to determine damages had been expected to expose the company to potentially enormous financial liability.
Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin rejected objections from some authors who argued the settlement amount was inadequate and approved attorney fees of more than $101 million. Anthropic stated that over 91% of eligible authors and publishers have already claimed their share of the settlement. Although the agreement resolves the class action, several authors and publishers who opted out continue to pursue separate copyright lawsuits against the AI company.
Pic Courtesy: google/ images are subject to copyright
