Judge approves Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement

Published Jul 23, 05:30 PM UTC

On July 24, 2026, Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement between AI company Anthropic and a group of authors who accused it of using their books to train its large language models without permission. The settlement, one of the largest in copyright history, resolves a nearly two-year legal process that began in August 2024. In June 2025, Judge William Alsup had partly ruled in Anthropic's favor, finding that using legally acquired books for AI training constituted fair use, but that using pirated books was not justified. The settlement covers nearly 500,000 books, with authors receiving approximately $3,000 per work. The agreement does not cover future conduct by Anthropic and does not prevent authors whose works were used but not on the court-approved list from suing. The settlement could set a precedent for pending copyright lawsuits against other AI companies like Meta, Perplexity AI, Google, OpenAI, and Nvidia.