Anthropic Settles Copyright Lawsuit with Authors for $1.5 Billion

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by authors who alleged the company used pirated copies of their books to train its AI chatbot, Claude. The settlement, pending judicial approval, is considered the largest copyright recovery in history and the first major settlement of its kind in the AI era.

The lawsuit was initiated by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, who claimed that Anthropic downloaded millions of pirated books from websites such as Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror to train its AI models.

In June, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that while training AI on copyrighted material might qualify as fair use, acquiring pirated copies was not legal. He found that Anthropic had illegally stored over 7 million pirated books in a central repository.

Under the terms of the settlement, Anthropic will compensate authors approximately $3,000 for each of the estimated 500,000 books affected. The company has also agreed to destroy the pirated datasets.

Anthropic's Deputy General Counsel Aparna Sridhar stated, "Today's settlement, if approved, will resolve the plaintiffs' remaining legacy claims."

Justin Nelson, an attorney representing the authors, remarked, "This settlement sends a powerful message to AI companies and creators alike that taking copyrighted works from these pirate websites is wrong."

The settlement is pending approval by U.S. District Judge William Alsup, with a hearing scheduled for next week.