Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude
A federal judge approved a $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic and a class of authors whose books were used to train the Claude AI chatbot. While the court maintained that AI training can constitute fair use, it penalized Anthropic for the unauthorized acquisition of pirated content.
Why it matters
This represents a landmark legal precedent in the intersection of AI development and intellectual property, balancing fair use rights with the responsibility to source training data legally.
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.
District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides “meaningful relief” to affected authors and publishers.
About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment.
Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was “the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.”
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