Judge Grants Final Approval to Anthropic’s $1.5 Billion Copyright Settlement

A federal judge in San Francisco has given final sign off to a $1.5 billion settlement between artificial intelligence company Anthropic and a group of authors who accused the company of using their books without permission to train its Claude chatbot.

Largest Copyright Settlement on Record

The judge overseeing the case rejected arguments that the payout was too small, calling it the largest known settlement in a US copyright case. The lawsuit was one of many filed by authors, publishers, and news organizations against tech companies over how their material was used to train AI systems, and it became the first major case of its kind to reach a settlement.

Background on the Case

Authors first sued Anthropic in 2024, claiming the company relied on pirated copies of their books to teach its AI model how to respond to prompts. A previous ruling found that training AI on books qualified as fair use, but also determined that Anthropic had violated authors’ rights by storing more than 7 million pirated books in an internal library not strictly tied to training purposes. A trial to determine damages, which could have reached into the hundreds of billions of dollars, had been scheduled before the settlement was reached.

Response From Both Sides

Anthropic’s deputy general counsel said more than 91% of eligible authors and publishers have already claimed their share of the payment. The authors’ lead attorney called it a historic recovery and said distributions to the class would begin as soon as possible. The judge overruled objections from some authors who argued the settlement undervalued their claims, awarding plaintiffs’ attorneys more than $101 million of the $187.5 million they had requested. Some authors opted out and continue to pursue separate lawsuits against the company.