Judge Approves Anthropic's Record $1.5 Billion Settlement in AI Copyright Lawsuit
A federal judge in San Francisco approved Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement with authors who accused the AI company of using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude model.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin has approved Anthropic's landmark $1.5 billion settlement in a copyright lawsuit filed by a group of authors in 2024. The writers accused the AI company of using pirated copies of their books to train its Claude large language model.
Originally assigned to Judge William Alsup, the case saw Alsup rule that Anthropic's use of the works for training constituted fair use, but found the company infringed copyright by storing 7 million pirated books in a central library. Alsup rejected the settlement in September 2024, expressing concerns that it was "shoving the terms down the throat of authors" and was incomplete.
Since then, Anthropic launched a dedicated website for the settlement, listing over 480,000 affected works so authors could verify their eligibility for claims. Under the approved terms, authors are expected to receive approximately $3,000 per affected work, and Anthropic is required to destroy the pirated copies of their books.
Some plaintiffs, however, deemed the payout too low and opted out to pursue separate lawsuits against Anthropic. Judge Martinez-Olguin took over the case after Alsup retired.
