Anthropic agrees to $1.5 billion settlement over copyrighted books used to train Claude AI
A U.S. federal judge approved a $1.5 billion settlement with authors alleging Anthropic used pirated books to train its Claude chatbot, marking the largest copyright class action in U.S. history.
A U.S. federal judge in San Francisco approved a $1.5 billion (€1.3 billion) settlement between Anthropic and a group of authors who claimed the company used pirated books to train its Claude chatbot. The deal, announced on 20 July, resolves a class-action lawsuit filed in August 2024 by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson.
Under the agreement, authors and publishers will receive $3,000 (€2,630) for each of an estimated 500,000 works covered, and more than 91 % of eligible claimants have already filed for payment, according to Anthropic. The settlement follows a June 2025 ruling that found Anthropic’s use of unlawfully obtained books did not qualify as fair use, exposing the company to potential statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work.
"We welcome the resolution of this matter," said Aparna Sridhar, Anthropic’s deputy general counsel.
"This is the largest publicly known copyright recovery in history," said Justin Nelson, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.
The case is among dozens of ongoing lawsuits against AI firms, including OpenAI, Google and Meta, over the use of copyrighted material in model training.