Historic AI Copyright Deal: Anthropic to Pay $1.5 Billion to Authors

In a landmark decision, a federal judge in San Francisco has given the green light to a record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, and a group of authors who accused the firm of misusing their books to train its AI chatbot, Claude. The settlement, which is the largest known in a US copyright case, was approved by US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin on Monday, despite objections from some authors who felt the amount was insufficient. This case is one of many copyright lawsuits filed against tech companies for using copyrighted materials to train large language models, and it marks the first major AI copyright case in the US to reach a settlement. The agreement was initially given preliminary approval by Judge William Alsup in September last year. According to Anthropic Deputy General Counsel Aparna Sridhar, the settlement followed a significant legal ruling on AI training, which deemed training AI on books as fair use under copyright law. Sridhar expressed satisfaction with the court's decision, stating that the overwhelming majority of eligible claimants had accepted the settlement. 'We are pleased that more than 91% of authors and publishers covered by the settlement have claimed their share of the payment, and we’re looking forward to bringing this matter to a close,' Sridhar said. The lead attorney for the authors, Justin Nelson, hailed the outcome as a historic victory for copyright holders. 'It is the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible,' Nelson said, referring to the payments that will be made to authors covered by the settlement. The lawsuit, which was filed in 2024, alleged that Anthropic used pirated copies of books without permission to train Claude. The company, which is backed by Amazon and Alphabet, was found by Judge Alsup to have infringed the authors' rights by storing over seven million pirated books in a 'central library.' A trial had been scheduled to determine the damages Anthropic could owe for the alleged piracy, with potential liability estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Despite the settlement, some authors and publishers have opted out and filed separate lawsuits against Anthropic, which are still pending. Judge Martinez-Olguin also approved over $101 million in legal fees for the plaintiffs' attorneys, out of the $187.5 million they had requested.