Anthropic approved for $1.5B books settlement

A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement requiring Anthropic to pay thousands of authors roughly $3,000 per book after the company used pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.

In a Monday ruling, District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said the class-action deal 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 and are now eligible for payment.

Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said the deal was “the largest known copyright recovery in history.”

“We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.”

The case traces back to a mixed ruling last summer from U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who granted preliminary approval in September before retiring. Alsup found that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books was not illegal, but ruled that Anthropic had wrongfully obtained millions of books through pirate websites.

Anthropic pointed to that decision as the key legal takeaway. Deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said Friday that it was a landmark ruling showing “that training AI on books is fair use under copyright law.”

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“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.”

Bestselling thriller novelist Andrea Bartz first filed the lawsuit with two other authors in 2024. The agreement is the first major settlement among dozens of AI copyright lawsuits still moving through the courts.