Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright class action settlement approved by US judge

Published Jul 21, 06:24 AM UTC

A U.S. federal judge in San Francisco approved a $1.5 billion settlement in a copyright class action lawsuit against Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot. The lawsuit alleged Anthropic used copyrighted works from shadow libraries like LibGen to train its AI models. While the judge previously ruled that Anthropic's use of creative works fell under fair use, the court took issue with the storage of millions of pirated books. Under the settlement, authors and publishers will receive $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works. An Anthropic counsel stated that over 91% of covered authors and publishers had claimed their share. The settlement is seen as a landmark but mixed result, with some creators calling for stricter laws. Similar lawsuits against Google, Meta, and OpenAI are ongoing.